Page 18 of A Recipe for Love
‘Well Reverend Douglas. But you can call me Jill.’
‘Reverend Douglas.’
Bella could almost swear the reverend’s bouncy curls flattened a fraction.
She followed Veronica and Jill through the grand front hallway into one of the rooms off the corridor beyond the estate office. ‘Could you tell Flinty we’ll take tea in the Blue Room?’
Bella bristled slightly. She wasn’t staff. She wasn’t even actually sure if Flinty was staff. People kept telling her she’d retired. ‘I think Flinty’s busy.’ Not that she wouldn’t drop everything to make Veronica’s tea.
‘Oh.’ Veronica looked personally affronted at the notion. ‘Well you’ll have to make it then.’
‘I’ll get tea.’ Adam came out of the room Veronica seemed to be about to go into. He held out a hand. ‘I’m Adam.’
‘Lord Lowbridge,’ Veronica corrected.
Jill gave another anxious half-curtsey.
‘You don’t need to do that. And it’s just Adam.’ Bella’s heart warmed a touch. Just Adam. That was who she was here for. Not for some baron or lord or laird or whatever the term was. Just Adam.
Darcy was hovering in the doorway behind him. ‘And this is my stepmother,’ he continued.
‘Darcy, Lady Lowbridge.’ Veronica was starting to sound utterly despairing at the informality.
Jill stepped forward. ‘I’m very sorry for your loss, Lady Lowbridge. For all of your loss, of course.’
Adam nodded. ‘Thank you. And I think you’ve met my fiancée, Bella.’
‘I’m not Lady anything.’ Bella smiled. ‘And I can get the tea. You go through.’
Veronica stalked past the doorway Darcy was standing in. ‘We’ll be in the Blue Room.’
Bella grabbed Adam’s hand before he could follow. ‘Isn’t that the Blue Room?’ She peered through the door. The décor had a definite blue-ish tint.
He shook his head. ‘That’s the drawing room, which is blue. The Blue Room is that way. And is yellow.’
She opened her mouth.
‘Don’t ask.’
She squeezed the hand she was holding. ‘How are you doing?’
‘I don’t know. Mostly I’m just doing what I’m told.’
By the time the tea was ready, the rest of the group were ensconced in what any sane person would definitely have referred to as the Yellow Room. Bella put the tray down on the low table in the centre of the room. She had a proper teapot, she had sugar in cubes in an actual bowl and milk in a jug. She had cups and saucers. Not cups and saucers that matched, but one thing she had learned from her search through the cupboards was that nothing matched. Everything, it appeared, was inherited and nothing had ever been chosen to go together. She waited to hear Veronica’s verdict on what she’d done wrong. She tapped the spoon on the edge of the sugar bowl. ‘Tongs for cubes, dear.’
Bella pretended not to have heard. ‘Tea, vicar?’
The reverend was sitting alongside Darcy on one side of the room. Adam and Veronica were next to each other on the other. Bella squeezed herself in between them.
‘We were just talking about the service.’ Jill directed her comments to Darcy. ‘I was wondering whether you’d be wanting a big service for the whole community.’
Veronica shook her head. ‘This is a family occasion. Cremation and then a service of committal at the chapel here. I imagine some of the other lairds will come, but there’s no need for a great hullaballoo.’
Darcy looked pale and tired.
Adam jumped in. ‘Although I know Darcy was wondering about burial. There is a graveyard here. I think it’s a long time since anyone has been buried there.’
‘Right. Well there’s no legal reason you can’t have a burial on private land, if you have space. I think it has to be a certain distance from water sources and that sort of thing, but the council or the funeral director could probably advise you on that.’ Jill paused. ‘You’d need someone to dig the actual grave of course.’
