“But, Papa, they—”
“Carly. The answer is no.”
She opened her mouth and I could see “You never let me do anything!” hovering right there, ready to blaze out. I grabbed her by the arm and hustled her out of the exhibit. “We’ll be in the gift shop, Mr. Aragon,” I called over my shoulder. “See you in a minute.”
“What is this all about? Let go of me!” she hissed.
“Don’t lose it,” I begged.
“Why shouldn’t I? He never lets me do anything. He treats me like I’m four years old. I hate it.”
“I know. It stinks. But if you lose your temper now, all our work will go for nothing.”
“He’ll never let me go. You heard him. It’s all about our family—what’s left of it.”
“Give the guy a break. If I were losing my family bit by bit, I’d be overprotective, too.”
“You’re not supposed to be on his side, Mac.”
“I’m on your side. Which is why we have to leave him alone to think it over. Then tonight I’ll call my dad and have him call yours to invite you personally.”
“It won’t work. I’m telling you. Once he’s made up his mind, nothing changes it. Even a call from an earl.”
My dad could talk me round to just about anything. I was betting Carly’s Christmas on the possibility that he could do the same with her dad.
If he couldn’t, I didn’t know what I’d do. Because, as Carly herself would say, we had no Plan B.
WHAT I DIDN’T EXPECT was to zip straight past Plan B and have Plan C pop up out of left field.
While Carly fried mince—sorry, hamburger—in a cast-iron skillet, I cut up onions and green chiles to put in it. Tears streaming down my cheeks, I dumped the vegetables in the pan and used the hem of my shirt to dry my face.
“If you run the knife under cold water, they don’t make you cry.”
“Thanks for the news flash.” I sniffled and finally the waterworks stopped so I could see.
“I hate to break it to you, but we need more for the salsa. You can grind it in the salsa mill, though.”
She showed me how to work the mill, told me the proportions of onion and tomato and cilantro and lime juice to use, and before you could say “Hogmanay,” I’d made my very first bowl of salsa.
I couldn’t wait to try this at home. Dad would love it.
“Look, Mr. Aragon.” I showed him the bowl. “Carly showed me how to make it.”
“I’m sure it will be the very best we’ve ever had,” he said with a smile. “Do they have serranos in Scotland?”
“I have no idea. Probably not. I wonder if British Airways would object to my smuggling some in my suitcase?”
Before he could speculate, the phone rang. Carly, who had her hands full with taco mixture in full sizzle, tapped the speakerphone button with her elbow and kept stirring. “Hello?”
“Carolina?”
Carly went still and squeezed her eyes shut in chagrin. “Hi, Mama.” Then she resumed stirring, scraping well-done bits up off the bottom of the pan. “How are you?”
“I’d be better if you took me off the speaker. Is your father there?”
“Hello, Alicia.”
A-lee-see-a. It sounded much nicer in Spanish. Or maybe it was the tone he said it in. I knew all about the Aragon parental dynamic—how Alicia was getting ready to marry another husband while her first was still in love with her. Yes, my mother can drive me insane, but at least she hasn’t tried that one.
“Carolina, please. I hate that thing.”
“I’m in the middle of cooking dinner, Mama. The meat will burn if I stop now.”
The soon-to-be Mrs. Vigil made a frustrated noise. “Very well, then. If you prefer my private business to be broadcast all over the house, so be it. I wanted to tell you that your dress and Antony’s tux arrived today. We had them sent to Richard’s house. I told you we’d decided to have the ceremony in New Mexico on Christmas Eve so that all his family could come?”
Emphasis on his.
“Mi abuelita y abuelito are flying up with you?” Carly asked.
“Yes. And ti hermana is coming in from Austin a few days before, to give us time to have her dress fitted. So I wanted to make sure your plane reservations were for the twenty-second. We should have both dresses fitted at once.”
“Mama.” Carly sighed. “I don’t understand why you went to all the trouble of getting me a dress when I’ve told you I’m not coming. And Antony can’t travel by himself, so he isn’t coming, either. I wish you happiness, but that’s the way it is.”
“Don’t be silly. Your father has made the flight arrangements.”
The face Carly turned to her dad was filled with disbelief and betrayal.
“They are fully refundable, Alicia,” he said. “I thought it best to leave the children’s options open if Carly could not be convinced to go.”
“Of course you would not think it best to tell her she only has one option—to support me,” she snapped. “Or to be happy for me. The two of you are doing all you can to spoil my happy day, aren’t you?”
“You can be happy without us, Mama,” Carly said on a sigh, as if this were a conversation she’d had at least fifty times. Maybe it was. “You’ll have Alana there, after all.”
“I want all my children with me.” Carly shrugged, though her mother couldn’t see it. “Rafael, you must make her go.”
“I can make her go to school and make her clean her room, Alicia,” he said, “but I cannot make a sixteen-year-old girl do this if she does not want to.”
“Give me one good reason why you can’t, besides her selfishness and your stubbornness.” Alicia’s voice rose in volume and pitch with every word.
Mr. Aragon glanced at Carly, whose cheeks were bright red and whose mouth trembled as she struggled not to cry.
“There is a very good reason, Alicia. Carolina is leaving for Scotland on Tuesday at the particular invitation of the Earl of Strathcairn. She will be spending Christmas Eve with all her friends. On the other side of the world.”
chapter 5
THE BEST PART about coming home to Strathcairn isn’t the sight of its four thick white turrets rising above the trees. It isn’t the massive baronial front with its arrow-slot windows, carved oak double doors, or crenellated roof. It isn’t even the first sight of the southern end of our thousand acres, where a gate and a discreet bronze sign inset in five hundred years of stone wall announce that you’re now on family land.
No, the best thing about coming home is that moment when I hit the double doors of the passenger exit at Edinburgh International at a dead run, my luggage bumping along behind me, and the first thing I see is my dad waiting for me. I know he spends half an hour working his way up to the front of the crowd of people waiting in the lounge, edging along the barrier until he’s positioned dead in the center where the doors open, so that there will be nothing between us when I burst through and fly into his arms.
“Lindsay, mo cridhe!”
I buried my face in his wool pea coat, smelling rain and smoke and the cologne he uses on special occasions like this. “Dad. Dad. I’m so glad to see you.” My voice wobbled on the point of tears. I don’t know what that was all about. Usually I can keep myself together better than that. But the sheer familiarity and solidity of his hug felt so good. And bad memories of the last time I’d come home—when David Nelson and his trial hung over our heads—were well in the past. He’d been locked away for the next twenty years and I never had to think of him again.
This time, my homecoming was happy and my friends were all here. It was enough to make anybody feel wobbly.
I got a grip on my emotions and turned toward the girls, who were crowding up behind us like a logjam in a spring brook. “Dad, I’d like you to meet my friends from America. You already know Lissa, don’t you?” One by one, they shook hands and introduced themselves, and I could practically see Carly telling herself, “I’m shaking hands with an earl. A real peer of the rea
lm, just like in the history books!”
LOL. They’d see before the drive was over what a love my dad is. How meeting all these girls all at once was probably terrifying for him, but because he was a gentleman, his first instinct was to make sure they were comfortable and had all their bits and bobs before we launched ourselves onto the motorway in the Range Rover.
I couldn’t resist pointing things out as we sped north and the sun fell through the sky. “This is the Forth Road Bridge, and we’re crossing the Firth of Forth. And in a bit we’ll pass Loch Leven, which we could see if it weren’t nearly dark.” Dad caught me up on the news, and I passed it back over my shoulder, explaining who people were and what had gone on while I was at school. And two hours later, Dad finally said, “Here we are, lassies. Welcome to Strathcairn.” The Range Rover growled through the gates and climbed the hill through the forest. We passed the village, where Dad honked at a guy with a couple of sheep in the road. The man waved as we passed, and I saw it was Lachlan Crombie, Carrie’s married older brother.
I couldn’t wait to introduce Carrie and Lily and the old gang to all the Spencer girls.
“Wait a second,” Carly said. “I thought you said we were on your land.”
“We are.”
“So you, like, own that village?”
Dad laughed. “Not anymore. Some of the cottages belong to my tenants, and some are freehold. The chip shop and the chemist have proper owners, and Dr. Mathieson owns his surgery. People come and go over the land the way they have done since it was granted to the family in 1541. It was enclosed in the 1700s, but by Queen Victoria’s time our income came less from sheep than from other investments, so we opened it up again.”
“Your family has been here since 1541?” Shani sounded a little winded. “I thought we were doing good to live in Lake Forest for five years.”
Dad laughed and the Rover crested the last hill. Every single person in the car—except Dad and me—gasped.
I grinned at Dad. Exactly the reaction I’d been expecting.
“It looks exactly like the movie—only better,” Gillian said on a long breath.
The Middle Window hadn’t done it justice, in my opinion. When we rolled up the drive and crunched to a stop, the girls practically fell out of the car, their heads tipped back to look up the massive walls to the towers on each end. “Steady on,” Dad said as Shani backed right into him, still looking up.
“Sorry,” she said hastily. “It’s just so big.”
“And hard to heat,” Dad said. “But you should ask Lissa about that. Welcome back again, lassie. I’m very much looking forward to seeing your dad when he comes.”
“Me, too.” She smiled at him and hefted her duffel onto the top of her rolling suitcase. “And my mom, who flew over at the last minute. They’re still in London. Did you enjoy the premiere?”
“It was nice to see the old place looking its best.” He gazed up at the Margaret tower fondly. “The production company touched it up a bit, you know.”
A bit. I stifled a snort. All the whitewashing in the world couldn’t hide the fact that the castle was showing its age. But only Dad and I knew that. The girls thought they’d stepped through a portal into another era, and I wasn’t going to tell them the looking glass had spots on it.
Dad wouldn’t dream of ushering guests into the house through the kitchen garden door, which the family typically used. Oh, no. Instead, he pushed open one of the huge double front doors and stood aside. I led the way in, breathing deep of the smell of home—old stone, wood, furniture polish, and wet wool.
“No elevator, you lot.” I picked up my suitcase and began to haul it up the grand staircase. “Grab your bags and use your knees.”
Thirty steps up, I looked back to see them in a ragged diagonal, turning in place, looking at the echoing entry hall, at the black marble compass rose set into the floor, even examining the massive portraits of my long-dead ancestors. “I promise the five-quid tour once you’re all settled.”
The guest floor is the third, technically, but this was no time for spreading people out. I wanted them close to me so we could talk late into the night and plan things. “This is the family’s floor. The master suite is there, and I’m down at the end of the corridor. In between we’ve got four bedrooms, so feel free to pick whichever one you like.”
“This blue one’s mine.” It was certainly Lissa’s color.
“Ohmigosh, Mac. Who is this?” Carly’s voice came out of the room next to it. I tossed my things in my room, which was so tidy it was obvious I hadn’t been there for three months, and went to find out what she meant.
Carly stood in front of the fireplace, gazing up at the five-foot portrait hanging above it. “Oh, that’s the, er…” I counted in my head. “The fourth Countess. Frances Arbuthnot MacPhail. Gainsborough painted it. Isn’t she lovely?”
“Look at the lace on that fichu,” Carly breathed. “You can see every detail.”
I had no idea what a fichu was, but if it made her happy, I was happy. “I take it you’re going to keep her company?”
“We were made for each other.”
I found Gillian and Shani in the Twins’ Room, so named for my grandfather and his brother, who were born six minutes apart. That six minutes, though, meant my grandpa and then my dad got the house, though it would go to my cousin Roger when—when Dad didn’t live here anymore. So, two generations later, the younger twin would keep things going.
“You can have your own rooms, you know,” I told them. “You don’t have to share.”
“It’s all good,” Gillian told me. “You had Shani all term, so I’m going to have her now.”
“Don’t you guys get in each other’s faces?” I never met two such outspoken people. Other than myself, of course.
Shani raised her eyebrows at me. “Sure. That’s part of the fun. I always know where I stand with this girl. Besides, I have to suck up to her. Otherwise the care packages her Nai-Nai sends me will stop coming.”
I couldn’t argue with that. “Meet you down in the hall in half an hour, okay? I’m dying for tea. We’ll do the tour after.”
“She means supper,” Gillian told Shani before she could ask.
“I know, ye numpty,” Shani said in a dead-on impression of… me.
“Ye wee rascal,” I told her. “We’ll make a Scots lass out o’ ye yet.”
Laughing, I left them to it. Those two were a total match for each other; far be it from me to get between them. Back in my room, I left the door open a couple of inches in case anyone wanted me. Hmm. It looked like Dad had had the walls plastered—the crack above the window was gone. The quilt on my bed had been swapped out with another of Grannie’s quilts. I had a third one on my bed in Mummy’s flat in Eaton Square. It felt a little odd to have my stuff scattered in three places on the globe. My clothes and shoes and school clobber were in California. Recent acquisitions like my stereo and books were in London. And here, it was like stepping back into my childhood. I hadn’t been much of a child for dolls. Instead, books lined the room on white shelves three feet high—Elizabeth Goudge, Tove Jansson’s Moomins series, Enid Blyton’s Adventure books, all stuffed in haphazardly as I’d read them again and again. The dresser, also painted white, held everything from jeans to sweaters, and I knew that downstairs in the scullery I’d find my anoraks and a collection of coats that probably dated back to the sixties. Hmm. At least they’d be in fashion again—Lissa would love that. Even though there wouldn’t be anything but rooks and deer for miles, she could sally forth knowing her coat was vintage and on the cutting edge.
I pulled my computer out of its case and plugged it in, and checked my phone for messages. One from Carrie and one from Mummy. Aha! Operation Prodigal Mum was about to begin.
“Darling!” she greeted me without even saying hello. “Welcome back. I’m so sorry I didn’t get to the airport, but your connection was only what, twenty minutes?”
“Something like that. We barely made it. Of course, our
party filled half the plane, so they couldn’t very well go without us. And Dad met us, and here we are.”
“What do the girls think of the old place?”
“They haven’t seen much but the hall and their rooms, but I thought Carly’s eyes were going to fall out of her head. She’s keeping Frances Arbuthnot company, completely blissful with all the old stuff.”
“That’s because she doesn’t have to clean it and keep it in order.”
Neither do you. I buttoned my lip. If I were to be successful in this campaign, it wouldn’t do to go ticking my mother off during the first two minutes. “Have you seen Lissa’s parents?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, they just left. I had them in to dinner. What a lovely girl Patricia is.”
She was probably the same age as my mother, or maybe a couple of years older. “I knew you’d like her. You should come for Christmas and spend some time with them while they’re here.”
Mummy laughed. “Hardly, darling. I don’t expect your father is in the mood for the Ghost of Christmas Past.”
“Whether he is or not, he’s going to get a Christmas like the ones you used to put on.”
“Darling, Christmas is only a week away. I used to begin work in September for our little parties.”
“How hard can it be? I’ll simply send out the invitations by e-mail, order the food catered, and everyone will turn up. Easy.”
Mummy laughed, but the musical notes of it had an edge of mockery I didn’t particularly like. “I think you’ll find catering is nonexistent in the village, and the people in Inniscairn and even Aberdeen will have been booked up for months.”
“I’ll have everything flown in from Edinburgh, then.”
“Good luck getting your father’s approval on that.”
Unless she planned to help me, it wasn’t fair of her to sit there in London and rain on my parade. “Honestly, could you be any less encouraging?”
Tidings of Great Boys Page 4
