Page 19 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
The room Jodie was directed into was painted green against all previous advertising. Bella was sitting on the sofa, laptop on her knee, paperwork spread out around her. ‘Jodie!’ She looked up and grinned.
‘Hi. Sorry I’m a bit late.’
‘No. I didn’t tell you where I was going to be. You’ve probably spent the last hour wandering around this place getting stuck in cupboards with ghosts.’
‘Do you have ghosts?’
‘Only a couple. Only one that really bothers us.’ Bella scooped scattered papers from the seat next to her. ‘Come in. Sit down. Shall we start off by me telling you a bit more about everything here?’
Jodie tried – she did try – to concentrate on the stream of information Bella supplied about the castle and the estate and the Lowbridge family, followed by an even more rapidly delivered information dump about their plans for the place: the developing cookery school born out of Bella’s previous life as a chef; the walled garden that Adam’s father had loved and which Adam was currently nurturing back into productivity to supply fruits, vegetables and herbs for the cookery school; the coach house, earmarked for transformation into guest accommodation but currently little more than a badly heated money pit; the ballroom which was intended to be their function room for parties and weddings; and, of course, the land itself.
‘So historically that would have been the main thing. We still have sheep. I don’t really get involved with them.’ She paused. ‘Apart from sometimes when they decide to follow me about the place. But they’re more Adam’s thing. He understands all that rural stuff. And he’s responsible for the gardens and the land, but one or two weeks a month he goes back over to Edinburgh because he had a business there before he inherited all of this and honestly that’s the main thing keeping us going until we get everything else properly up and running. And Darcy does the accounts and invoices and all that stuff. Veronica, Adam’s grandmother, still helps with that.’ Bella paused. ‘I say helps. I mean more “checks that we’re doing it properly”.’
Veronica was the woman who’d questioned her about where in London she was from the evening before, wasn’t she? Would she be here checking on Jodie’s work as well? She shuddered slightly at the thought.
Bella didn’t seem to notice. ‘So shall we?’
‘Sorry?’ Jodie had been thinking all the ways Veronica might catch her out and had stopped listening to a single thing her new boss had been saying.
‘Shall we take a walk around? I know Darcy showed you some stuff yesterday but I don’t think you went in the coach house, and honestly there’s bits of the castle I still get lost in.’ She grinned. ‘Adam and his gran, and even Flinty, act like living somewhere like this is totally normal.’
‘I guess it is for them.’
‘Yeah. To the manor born and all that.’
Jodie ran through the characters in her head. ‘Flinty and Adam’s gran are the women who came round last night?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And are they together?’
‘Yep.’ Bella grinned. ‘So from what I can work out they had some sort of thing when they were young but then the baron – Adam’s granddad – set his sights on Veronica, and everyone said how lucky she was and her parents were super proud that she was going to be Lady Lowbridge and there didn’t seem to be a way out.’
‘But they’re together now.’
‘Just recently. It’s adorable.’ Bella paused. ‘Never let either of them hear you say that though. Flinty would clip your ear, and Veronica would… I don’t know. Probably freeze the blood in your veins with one of her looks.’
That definitely fit with the image of Veronica that was forming in Jodie’s mind.
Bella was already striding out of the room. ‘So what did Darcy already show you?’
‘Not much. Only the Dower House really. I think she was trying not to overwhelm me when I’d only just arrived.’
‘Right then. The grand tour.’
She followed Bella outside, quickly trying to get her bearings. The castle buildings were arranged around a square courtyard. The Dower House was up the path from the front right-hand corner. Bella was leading her out towards the back left. Through there they discovered the stables.
‘Darcy’s domain,’ Bella explained. ‘She’s the horse lover. Space for three more horses permanently stabled though so we could rent that out. Un-serviced at the moment. If we were going to hire a stablehand we’d need to charge more, I guess.’ She shrugged. ‘No idea what the going rate for stabling is though.’
Jodie shook her head. Surely even the real Gemma wasn’t an expert on stabling fees as well.
The tour continued around the outside of the castle and back into the corridor on the right side of the building. ‘We don’t really use these rooms at the moment.’ Bella swung open a door. ‘This could be incredible though.’
Jodie followed her boss into a decidedly faded but still impressive hall. The ceilings were double height, and although they’d come in a side door she could see that there were grand double doors at both ends of the room and on the far wall leading outside. ‘This is the ballroom?’
‘Yeah. Seen better days obviously, but it’s pretty much watertight for the time being at least. Thanks to Pavel.’
The room was past its heyday but Jodie could see the potential. ‘So if you did weddings would you do the ceremony in here?’
