Christmas at the Castle

by Marion Lennox

  ‘Let’s go see, then, shall we?’ He looked almost cheerful, and Holly glowered.

  ‘You fancy playing Sugar Daddy?’

  ‘I never have before,’ he said. ‘You want to indulge me?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then indulge the kids,’ he said, smile slipping. ‘Their mother doesn’t trust me and why would she? If I introduce you and you look like you’ve bought the cheapest dress you can find...’

  ‘She’ll think you’re just like your father.’

  ‘That’s it,’ he said, smiling again. ‘So this needs to be part of your role. Prove I’m not my father. Buy expensive, Holly, and let me pay.’

  ‘Just how rich are you?’ she demanded and he sighed and sat down in his car again and retrieved his tablet computer from under the seat. He hit the web and a minute later she was looking at an article on the Internet.

  Angus Stuart. There was no mention of aristocracy here. There was a brief mention of his grandparents—he obviously came from a lot of money, but that was a mere backdrop.

  He’d topped the most prestigious business school in the US. He’d been head-hunted by some of the biggest financial institutions in the world. Under his financial aegis, he’d made small companies big, big companies enormous, and he was now running one of the biggest.

  There was a guess at his net worth—once again, nothing to do with his inheritance in Scotland—that made Holly gasp.

  ‘That’s obscene,’ she said, staring at the figure. ‘It can’t be right.’

  ‘I think they forgot a zero,’ he agreed cheerfully. ‘But, even if they did and even if that worked against me, there’s still plenty for the odd dress. Come on, Holly, we’re already laying the ghost of one very miserly Earl. Let’s lay it a bit more. You want me to help or you want to do this alone?’

  ‘Maybe they’d throw me out if I was alone,’ Holly said, staring from the screen to the exquisite window dressing of the shop and back again. ‘This is real Cinderella territory, only I get a longer ball.’ She took a deep breath and finally opened the car door. Instantly a doorman was beside her and Holly realised the vacant parking place was specifically designated for customers.

  ‘Would Sir like me to valet park the car?’ the man purred to Angus and Holly thought of her grandmother sending them here—Maggie was going to get an earful—and then she looked at Angus and he was grinning again.

  This was a game to him. Maybe it could be a game to her?

  The last few months had been horrific. She still had debts; she still didn’t know their full extent. This was three weeks of time out before horrific took over again.

  And this guy was gorgeous. This guy was rich and he wanted to indulge her. This guy was smiling a challenge and she met his gaze and tilted her chin and made herself smile back.

  Maybe that was a mistake because smiling at this man...it made her feel...it made her feel...

  Nothing. She was allowed to feel nothing, she told herself fiercely. She was acting out a fairy tale and that was all this was—acting.

  So get on with it.

  ‘Thank you,’ she told the doorman with all the panache a woman in baggy faded jeans could muster as she alighted from the Earl of Craigenstone’s car.

  * * *

  Angus sat on a weird Queen Anne chair, which was possibly the most uncomfortable chair he’d ever sat on, while Holly tried on clothes.

  From the moment they’d walked into the shop, the manager and shop assistants assumed it was Angus who held the purse strings. Of course they did. He was wearing tailored chinos, a soft cashmere sweater and a butter-soft leather jacket. Admittedly the dog he was holding looked a bit scruffy, but Angus was dressed to fit in.

  Holly was pretty much as he’d first seen her.

  Despite his pressure on Holly, he’d had his doubts when they’d pulled up here. But though she still looked like a welfare case, she wasn’t abashed.

  Australians weren’t as class conscious, he thought. She was gazing around appraisingly, as if she had every right to be here.

  He introduced himself and explained his fiancée’s loss of luggage—his future Ladyship’s luggage, he amended, deciding to lay it on thick. They needed everything. The manager beamed and staff appeared from everywhere. He was provided with his chair. Scruffy was provided with a water bowl and a cushion. Holly disappeared into the changing room and came out looking...different.

  She was wearing a pair of cream tailored trousers and a classic pastel-blue twinset in yarn so soft you could sense its softness ten feet away. Someone must have produced a comb and settled her unruly mop of copper curls into compliance. They’d powdered her nose and faded her freckles. She looked elegant, she looked expensive—she looked exactly what the fiancée of the Earl of Craigenstone should look like.

  Wasn’t that what he wanted? Of course it was, he told himself, and nodded his approval. The manager beamed. ‘I think we have one outfit then, My Lord.’ He nodded to the assistant who’d helped Holly dress.

  But Holly took one look in the full-length mirror and, to everyone’s astonishment, she giggled.

  ‘This just needs pearls,’ she managed when she stopped chuckling.

  Yes, it did, Angus conceded.

  ‘We can arrange that,’ the manager said and beckoned for the nearest minion. ‘Mary-Anne, slip next door and ask Henry if we can try...’

  But, ‘I didn’t say I wanted pearls,’ Holly told him, her smile fading. ‘This outfit might need pearls but I don’t need this outfit.’ She turned to Angus and whirled, showing the full effect of demure and expensive. ‘Do you really think this is me?’

  ‘Are we dressing you?’ he asked. ‘Or dressing a role?’

  ‘I’m not an actor, Angus.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I mean every time I look in the mirror I’ll feel like an imposter. If you want to be engaged to me, no matter for how long, you need to be engaged to me. Me. Not what you or Gran or anyone else expects your future wife to look like. Even if I’m acting, I need to put my own stamp on the role.’

  The manager looked confused, as well he might. Angus felt confused. Even Scruffy looked a bit confounded.

  ‘You need clothes, Holly. These fit the bill.’ These clothes were what he knew. These he understood. They were the clothes of a woman of...quality?

  ‘So you’re suggesting two or three more pairs of these trousers, linen shirts like this that I can pop the collar up—Sloane Ranger style—a couple of demure twinsets, a string of pearls, tailored jackets, a little black dress or two, designer flats, court shoes—is that what we’re after?’

  ‘Yes,’ Angus said definitely, and the manager beamed again.

  ‘We can do that.’

  ‘But I can’t,’ Holly said and gazed around the shop, and the more she gazed the more depressed she looked. ‘I don’t see anything red. I like red.’

  ‘We have a sweet little jacket in a very tasteful burgundy,’ the manager said. ‘It’d look lovely over those trousers.’

  ‘Red,’ Holly said with the beginning of belligerence. ‘Bright pillar box red. A red that clashes with my hair. Or turquoise green. Or a lovely canary yellow. And I’m sorry but I hate these trousers. I know they’re lovely quality but they make me feel like I’m some sort of ageless display item.’ She glanced out of the window, across the street. The mannequin in the opposite shop window was wearing a woollen dress, soft purple with diagonal hot pink stripes. ‘That’s more me.’

  ‘Is that the sort of thing you usually wear?’ Angus said faintly, while the manager started to look as if he’d swallowed a lemon.

  ‘No, but it’s what I’d like to wear,’ she retorted. ‘I’ve spent the last five years saving every cent to buy my restaurant. I wear jeans and T-shirts and my chef’s uniform. I work nights so I don’t
socialise. I have two wedding-and-funeral outfits, one for summer, one for winter, and they’re beige because people don’t remember beige so you can change a scarf and wear them over and over again. But if you’re serious about spending...’ She flicked over a price tag and gasped. ‘If you’re serious about spending this sort of money, or, if you’re serious about letting me be a fiancée, then I reckon I ought to be my sort of fiancée. Does that make sense?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said cautiously. ‘I think so.’

  ‘But you like this?’

  ‘It’s suitable.’

  ‘You haven’t exactly chosen a suitable fiancée,’ she reminded him.

  ‘I haven’t exactly chosen...’ But then he looked at the manager’s dour face and he decided enough was enough. He wasn’t about to discuss temporary engagements in public.

  ‘My mother will probably be coming over...for the wedding,’ he told the man consolingly. ‘She’s American but this style of clothing is exactly what she’d love. That’s why I brought Holly here. If I can leave my car here now, I’ll bring my mother—and her friends—in for a pre-wedding shop as soon as they get here.’

  ‘Certainly, My Lord,’ the man said heavily, casting a look of dislike at His Lord’s intended. ‘So your mother has taste?’

  ‘Yes, she does,’ Angus said and Holly smiled her sympathy at the poor man.

  ‘That’s put me in my place properly,’ she said and she reached out and took the manager’s hand and shook it with such warmth that the man’s disapproval gave way to something that could almost be a smile.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not promising to be a very suitable wife of an Earl,’ she told him. ‘Right now, I’m a very unsuitable Earl’s fiancée. I’m sorry for your trouble. I’d like to say I’ll do better, but for now I think you’d better put all your trust in Angus’s mom.’

  * * *

  Which explained why an hour later they were back on the London road, with Holly wearing black leggings, blue leather boots that reached above her knees, a gorgeous oversized scarlet turtleneck sweater and a cute scarlet beret that should have screamed at her copper curls but didn’t. She had a suitcase of similar clothing in the boot and she looked like a cat who’d finally got herself her canary. Possibly even two canaries.

  She’d even managed to find a cute coat for Scruffy and a brand new lead.

  He drove and she hugged herself and looked...happy.

  How could clothes make you happy? They didn’t, he thought. They were a necessity of life, yet Holly kept looking down at her boots and turning her ankles so she could admire them from all sides. Beaming and surreptitiously wiping away imaginary fingerprints.

  ‘My boots are awesome,’ she said some fifty miles down the road. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  ‘The airline cheque will never cover this.’

  ‘The airline cheque was never meant to. This is your uniform.’

  ‘My uniform would have been the twinset and pearls.’

  ‘It would have made you look more distinguished.’

  ‘I don’t think I can do distinguished.’

  ‘You could try.’

  ‘I will try,’ she said and polished her boots some more and he thought she looked very, very cute.

  The huge ring looked over the top on her finger. It was so big it looked...good.

  Suitable for the wife of an Earl?

  What was he thinking? He wasn’t an Earl, or at least he was but he was already making tentative queries to see if the title could be repealed. He had no wish for any son of his, or grandson or great-grandson, to give himself airs because of outdated British aristocracy. The castle would be sold and he’d be done with it.

  The thought gave his mother comfort, relief. Did it do the same for him?

  Yes, because he had no wish to be the Earl of Craigenstone.

  Even if this girl beside him was to be Lady Craigenstone?

  Whoa. What was he thinking? Yes, Holly was cute, bouncy, sweet, but since when had he ever done cute, bouncy, sweet? He liked his women sophisticated, controlled, cool.

  ‘You’re being incredibly nice for a dragon Earl,’ Holly said, and her words brought him up sharp.

  ‘Dragon Earl?’

  ‘That’s what your title’s always been. You have a reputation to live up to and so far you’re failing. I haven’t seen one thing not to like.’ And then she blushed, a very cute blush that tinged her whole face pink. ‘That is...I didn’t mean...’

  ‘It’s not exactly a come-on,’ he said gravely, ‘to tell me I’m not the sort of Earl who bops the villagers with his blunderbuss and throws them in the pond.’

  ‘It wasn’t meant to be a come-on.’

  ‘No,’ he said gravely. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘And you have booked separate rooms for us for tonight?’

  ‘Stanley booked us rooms.’

  ‘Stanley,’ she said and he heard disapproval. She snuggled the little dog close and he thought she was still having qualms about what they were doing. ‘He doesn’t like me, you know. Suppose he tells the kids that we’re not really engaged?’

  ‘He won’t,’ Angus said. He forbore to go further but he could have added that he’d told Stanley he knew about a certain bank account and if he didn’t want criminal proceedings then it’d pay him to do what Angus wanted—and be nice to Holly and Maggie.

  ‘Or you’ll bop him with your blunderbuss?’ Holly enquired.

  ‘You’d better believe it.’

  ‘Ooh, there’s the dragon Earl speaking,’ Holly said and chuckled again and Angus glanced across at her and it was all he could do not to pull the car to the side of the road, take her in his arms and kiss her.

  Huh?

  Huh was right. Was he out of his mind? She was his temporary Christmas chef. His pretend fiancée. She was his employee.

  He suddenly, urgently, wished she wasn’t.

  ‘Do you mind if I use the sound system?’ he asked and she blinked.

  ‘Of course not. It’s your car. If we try we might find Christmas carols.’

  ‘I downloaded the latest stock market reports that came in overnight,’ Angus said repressively. ‘I’m concerned about them.’

  ‘Of course you are,’ Holly said, changing tack immediately. ‘Me, too. And so’s Scruffy. You go right ahead and listen and we’ll tell you whether you’re right to be concerned. I’m no expert, but Scruffy’s great at independent analysis. The stock market reports. Let’s at them. I imagine the whole world must be worried.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  ANGUS’S PLAN WAS to drop Holly at Delia’s dreary little two-up, two-down and pick her up in half an hour or so. ‘Because I look like my father. She’ll hate me on sight. It’s all my mother can do not to hate me. My presence won’t help; it’s you who needs to persuade her to let the kids come with us.’

  But, ‘She needs to trust both of us,’ Holly decreed, and in her bright clothes, with her shiny blue boots, she exuded confidence and authority. ‘All of us. You and me and Scruffy. We’re a team.’

  Which might possibly have worked better if the moment the door opened a skinny black cat hadn’t taken one look at Scruffy, screeched and headed for the stairs. Holly hadn’t been holding the dog tightly enough. He was down and after it, and it took five minutes pacifying to get Scruffy downstairs and the cat down from the curtain rod in the kids’ bedroom.

  Then they were left with a white-faced, obviously ill woman and dubious kids, the youngest of which—a girl of about ten—was clutching her cat and glaring at Scruffy with disgust.

  ‘Melly doesn’t like dogs,’ she announced by way of introduction. It was not a good start, Angus thought, but better than the chaos of two minutes ago.

  ‘He’s McAllister’s dog,’ Holly said. She loo
ked at Delia, a woman in her fifties but who looked much older. ‘And you’re Delia. My grandmother knows you—my Gran is Maggie McIntosh from the village. She says I’m to give you a hug from her but after scaring your cat I’ll only hug if you say so.’

  It was exactly the right thing to say. The woman’s face had been closed, defensive, but both of Holly’s pieces of information obviously pierced the armour.

  ‘McAllister,’ she said. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s in a nursing home,’ Angus said and Delia glared at him.

  ‘That’d be right. I bet you put him there.’

  ‘I never met the man,’ Angus said and Holly subtly moved in front of him.

  ‘Angus might look like your ex-husband,’ she said softly. ‘But Delia, he’s not him. He’s been raised in America and he’s only just seen the castle for the first time.’

  ‘McAllister wouldn’t go into a nursing home unless he was forced. And why does his dog look so skinny?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Holly said. ‘But we’ll find out.’

  The woman turned her attention to Holly. By her side, the children were silent. Waiting for a verdict? They’d pleaded to come to the castle. In the face of their mother’s dislike, would they still wish to? Ben, the oldest, a skinny, pale kid who looked almost malnourished, was looking dismayed at the way this was going. Maybe he was also dismayed at how closely Angus resembled his father in person.

  He’d begged to come to the castle. Was he now having doubts? Had they gone to all this trouble for nothing?

  ‘You’re Maggie McIntosh’s granddaughter?’ Delia was saying, incredulously.

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘You look like her.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The woman smiled a little, and the tension faded imperceptibly. ‘Maggie was...almost my friend.’