Page 88 of One More Christmas at the Castle
I couldn’t resist buying them when I came across them, so luckily there were a lot more than would have fitted on our little artificial tree.
With the addition of a long string of twinkling LED lights and a lot of lurid tinsel, the tree looked lovely when we’d finished, even if a little sparsely decorated in places.
‘We’ve forgotten the candy canes!’ I said, rummaging about in our boxes at the back of the room. ‘Here they are.’
Those made all the difference, though there was still room to add a few more things.
‘I thought I’d bake some of my spiced ginger Christmas tree biscuits for the tree in the Great Hall tomorrow morning, so I’ll make a few extra for ours,’ I said.
‘They sound delicious. I love a bit of gingerbread!’ Xan said.
‘These are extra thin, so they stay crispy on the tree and pierced for hanging up. But I’ll make you some proper gingerbread too, Xan, when I bake them,’ I promised.
It wasn’t all that late, so we watchedThe Grinch, accompanied by buttered crumpets and hot chocolate. Plum, since he was looking left out, got one of the little bone biscuits I’d bought him.
With huge restraint, I limited myself to two crumpets, because a few more nights like this one and my figure would be permanently overlaid with more blubber than a minke whale.
‘I’ll miss these evenings, once the other guests arrive and you’re not free to join us any more,’ I said, settling back down on the sofa next to Xan, with Plum crunching another biscuit between us. ‘Still, by then we’ll probably be too busy to do anything except slump when we’ve a moment to ourselves. Things are usually non-stop over Christmas itself.’
‘You must havesometime off, though,’ Simon said.
‘Oh, catering for Christmas is what we’re paid for, so we just throw ourselves into it – and we enjoy it too, don’t we, Henry?’
He agreed and said, ‘But you’re always welcome to drop in, Simon, however busy we are.’
‘Yes, of course, Simon. Come in by the door to the Garden Hall whenever you like.’
‘There are still several days left before the rest of the guestsarrive,’ Henry pointed out. ‘Plenty of time for more nights like this.’
‘Though of course, when everyone else has arrived, I’ll expect you and Henry to treat me with all due deference and respect,’ Xan said in a lofty voice. ‘Not Simon, of course, because he’s my social equal.’
I threw a cushion at him, but he fielded it neatly.
‘Only in public,’ said Henry, with a grin.
But there were already some changes to the household routine. Next morning, everyone, including Mrs Powys and Xan, breakfasted in the morning room.
Henry, having fetched the newspapers early, helped me cook breakfast – all as Mrs Powys had ordered. I added some small poppy-seed rolls I’d taken from the freezer first thing, too.
While I cleared up the pots and pans, Henry went to and fro between the kitchen and the morning room, filling up the jug of juice and getting more milk.
‘Lucy, who insisted she only ever ate toast for breakfast, is tucking into the biggest plateful of bacon and eggs you ever saw,’ he reported.
‘Just as well we made a generous amount, then. It doesn’t sound as if there’ll be much in the way of leftovers for you to polish off, though, Henry!’
‘I made enough extra bacon for a roll anyway,’ he said. ‘I like it just as much cold, with lots of tomato sauce.’
He took it from a covered dish on top of the stove and had just taken an enormous and greedy bite, when he exclaimed thickly, ‘I forgot – Nancy asked for Marmite.’
‘I’ll do it. You look like a hamster with your cheeks bulging so much,’ I said, getting out the little brown jar.
When I went into the morning room, Xan was sitting opposite the door and gave me a smile of such warmth, though I’m sure he was just being friendly. I felt my expression slip from its usual one of professional cool into an answering smile, though, until I set down the Marmite and found Nancy looking from me to Xan in a brightly interested way … and my employer staring at me in slight surprise.
‘Is there anything else you need?’ I asked hastily.
‘No, we have everything we want – you may go,’ Mrs Powys said dismissively, and I hurried out.
I was thinking one of her ancestors might have been a Gorgon.
