Page 7 of Some Like It Scot
My possible escape plan suddenly shrank to a sigh. I couldn’t leave the madhouse. My and the magazine’s reputations were at stake. I’d signed on for the long haul. I shrugged my shoulders and accepted my fate. I’d been trapped before, and this couldn’t be as bad as the volcano.
My attention slid back up the stairs to meet a set of narrowed blue eyes, and my body instinctively prepared for battle.
I raised my chin and flashed Mrs. Lennox a smile. “I look forward to sharing Craighill and the Edwardian Experience”—without the hand flourish—“with the world. You can count on me.”
Chapter 2
Graeme
“We’ve gotten ourselves into a belter of a disaster, Mum.” I pushed my hand through my hair as I entered Mother’s kitchen, the chaos from Craighill still ringing in my ears like an annoying song I couldn’t shake. “I told you we shouldnae have let the house to them.”
Mum didn’t even look up from the sink as she washed up from supper. “They were the only ones who would pay the price we asked. You ken that.”
“But they’re numpties, the lot of them.” I released a long sigh and leaned against the doorframe, replaying the afternoon, including a chase through the three-hundred-year-old MacKerrow family estate house in search of an escaped parrot. “They’re mental, Mum. And they’ve turned our family estate into a madhouse.”
“Graeme.” Her gentle reprimand only fueled my arguments.
“The man playing the part of the gardener looks like he stepped out of a zombie apocalypse movie. Ana Lennox has her sights set on finding a husband and isnae being subtle about it.” I cringed at the thought of her showing up wherever I worked in the house. “And there’s a dodgy parrot with a propensity for pinching small objects. He even stole my hammer yesterday.” I stared at my mother to emphasize the ridiculousness of the entire situation. “And that’s only some of the actors taking overourancestral home!”
Mum’s chuckle did little to dim my ire. “Graeme, first off, we’ve no got the money to turn the place around on our own. It took everything we had just to purchase it back so it’d be in the MacKerrowfamily again.” One of her dark brows edged northward. “And we’ll never restore it as a venue or inn unless we earn the means to do so from people just like the Lennoxes.”
I looked away from her knowing stare.
My parents and I—even my brother Calum—had already dissolved our collective savings to purchase the estate from German businessman Carl Newman after his great-grandfather bought the settlement from Duncan MacKerrow in 1919. Just after the Great War, many of the larger Scottish estates fought for survival. Increased taxes, business losses from the war, and tenants buying up their own farms led to grand estate owners forfeiting precious family properties.
The desire to repossess family land continued through each generation. Now we had it, but our ownership hinged on the edge of a knife if we couldn’t earn money to pay for the mortgage and improvements.
And the weight of that knowledge hit my shoulders with added force because I was the primary manager of the estate. As eldest son, it fell to me, but I’d also been the driving force behind recapturing the property. And with Dad teaching history at university on the mainland, Mum running her local bookshop and helping take care of Lachlan, and Calum working and traveling as an editor by day and author by night, the task fell most naturally to me. And it made sense. I could run my wildlife sculptures and woodcrafts business from my home, continue my carpentry work among the islanders, and navigate the needs of Craighill’s tenants as well as initiate restoration.
Plus, it gave me a chance to keep a keen eye on things at the house. Though, after today, I wished my eyes weren’t so keen. There were things I couldn’t unsee. Ana Lennox’s eye makeup was one. Her father’s parrot was another. And then there was the ostrich mount. What on earth would lead Mrs. Lennox to think the stately home of Craighill needed an ostrich?
I pressed my fingers into my eyes as if that might help remove theimages and then stretched out my spine, my head nearly meeting the top of the doorframe. My back twinged with a sudden pain, reminding me of my failed attempt at catching the American woman falling from the stairs.
My sister had been a tall woman, but the American even bested Greer by a few inches. My throat closed off at the memory of the way her curves pressed against my chest as she’d landed on me before we both crashed to the floor.
All woman.
My head thrummed with a deeper pain at the thought. Now I was the one going full-on mental. Clearly, it had been much too long since I’d held a woman in my arms. And since the last one chose to leave and take my heart with her, I hadn’t been in search of another. Still wasn’t.
Especially some fiery-tempered American social media... whatever.
“Some barmy American broke the stair railing on the main stairs.”
Now why did I feel the need to state that aloud?
Mum’s other brow joined the first. “The same railing you’re having to repair because it was already falling apart?”
I looked away and walked to a nearby window.
Too many things needed attention at the house, but I loved the work. Restoring craftsmanship my forefathers designed and constructed to showcase the love of their home fed my soul. There was a whole host of things I couldn’t fix. Life had driven that point to the painful spot. Butthis, I could. Nevertheless, it was going to take money and a long time—I sighed—and I’d have to work around the Edwardian actors to do it.
What inspired a rich man and his wife to offer a historical experience for tourists with a penchant for wearing old-fashioned clothes and acting like rich people from the early 1900s, I had no idea, but from the extensive application the Lennoxes sent my family to justify their desire to let the house, the venture sounded oddly lucrative.
My shoulders slumped at the idea.
They were turning the beautiful MacKerrow estate house into a bathersome theme park.
The familiar view from the window of the village of Glenkirk calmed me with its more than a dozen buildings in a long line situated toward the rich blue hues of Loch na Keal. My gaze traveled over the lush green glen behind the village toward a hill beyond, where I daily trekked from my cottage hidden along the craigs above. I caught a glimpse of one of Craighill’s turret tops peeking above the hillside. I’d stood upon that parapet on the first evening we’d purchased the house, gazed out over a view I’d known the whole of my life. But standing on the stones my forefathers helped carve to create the MacKerrow ancestral home caused pride to settle deep in my chest.
