Page 8 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
The final part of the journey took them up along the river to the road bridge and then back down the far side, where Pavel pulled up outside a large stone building.
‘Wow,’ Jodie murmured. ‘Bit of a walk to get back to the village then.’
‘There’s a footbridge there. I could have dropped you there but I figured with your luggage…’ He paused, presumably realising that Jodie’s moving-to-Scotland baggage amounted to a single suitcase. ‘You travel light?’
‘Always.’
‘Here we are then,’ said Pavel. ‘So that’s the coach house, and then the main castle is through there.’
The main castle. Jodie climbed down from the van and looked up at the huge stone walls, suppressing a giggle. Take that, Gemma Bryant. You might have left for bigger and better things but who was the one moving into an actual castle? ‘Great.’
‘Hi!’
Jodie turned towards the voice. The woman jogging through the arch towards them was about Jodie’s age, with long dark brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, wearing a white T-shirt and black jeans.
‘I’m Bella! I’m literally just finishing off a class – they’re wiping down their benches while their cookies cool – so I can’t chat, but I wanted to say hi and welcome. Adam’s…’ She stopped and looked around. ‘Adam’s somewhere. And Darcy. They’ll sort you out. So sorry.’ She turned away, paused and turned back. ‘Sorry. Welcome. Came to say welcome and then didn’t say it. You’re Gemma?’
Jodie nodded without pausing. Actually, was that too fast? Had she started nodding before Bella got her name out? ‘Yes. Yes. I am. Gemma Bryant. Yes.’
OK. That was definitely too much. Nobody was that excited about their own name.
‘So glad you’re here.’ Bella smiled brightly. However oddly Jodie was acting, it didn’t seem to have bothered her new boss. Why would it? Presumably she wasn’t meeting her new employee primed for possible identity fraud. Nobody would steal someone else’s job in the back end of nowhere and brazenly turn up pretending to be the legitimate new employee. The very idea of it was insane. Bella turned to Pavel. ‘I don’t suppose you could hang on until Adam resurfaces?’ She looked back at Jodie. ‘I don’t want to leave you on your own.’
‘It’s fine,’ Pavel reassured her. ‘I’m sure we can track him down. Or Darcy.’
‘Thank you.’ Bella rushed away.
So that was Bella. Bella had been the woman on the phone, so she was guessing she was the boss. It seemed like she ran the cookery school. Unfortunately the fact that there was a cookery school was pretty much the only thing Jodie had already learned about her new workplace, so this deduction didn’t particularly help her.
Who else was there? Adam. She was guessing Adam was Bella’s partner? Business partner or partner partner? Maybe both? But Darcy? Surely she wasn’t expected to know everything at this point. Or was she? ‘Darcy?’ she enquired tentatively.
‘Adam’s stepmum. She was married to the old laird.’
Laird? Jodie vaguely thought that was either Scottish for lord or possibly some sort of mythical Highland pixie.
‘And kind of their bookkeeping person. She’ll probably be in the office if she’s not out at the stables. Adam will be off on the land somewhere, so Darcy’s probably easier to find. Come on.’ He strode through the arch. Jodie pulled her case awkwardly across the cobbles behind him. Pavel stopped, reached over and lifted her case as if it was candyfloss light. ‘I can take this.’
‘Thanks.’ Jodie took the chance to look around. The castle didn’t get any less castle-ish for getting closer to it. ‘This place is huge.’
‘Well, it’s a castle.’
‘Yeah, but…’ Jodie wasn’t super familiar with castles. The word brought primary school history lessons to mind. She knew about keeps, and then what? Mottes and baileys? She didn’t actually know what those last two were. Was motte a fancy history word for moat?
Anyway, Jodie’s mental picture of a castle was a simple, fairly squat tower on top of a mound. Lowbridge Castle was nothing like that. From the coach house you came through the arch into a courtyard with stone buildings on four sides, all extending up to at least two storeys.
‘They own all this?’
‘Yep.’
Bella had been young though. The owners of a place like this were old, and wore wax jackets and sensible tweed skirts. Or they were Russian oligarchs who’d won it off some poor posh English sap in a gambling club somewhere in Kensington. Normal-looking women with Yorkshire accents didn’t live in places like this.
‘Come on.’
She followed Pavel through a wooden door, and then down a corridor and into a large kitchen. There were people gathered around an island unit in the middle of the room, apparently hanging on Bella’s every word.
‘Excuse us,’ Pavel called.
Jodie scurried after him, through a hallway decorated with dark wooden panels, gilt-framed oil paintings and an actual suit of armour, and then through a smaller door into an office.
