Free The Vintage Girl by Hester Browne Page A

a house that costs forty thousand a year just to heat.”
    “Log fires are the most romantic thing
ever
, and you’ve got your own forest out there!”
    Robert started to say something, then stopped himself. It seemed to be taking a fair bit of self-control. “We may have to agree to disagree on this one,” he said. “I’m only telling you now because every meal we have when I’m home turns into a row. Dad has fallen for this place, and he thinks I should too. But I’m a businessman, and he’s not. I don’t want you to be embarrassed about whose side to take. He’s your man to talk about romance with. Just don’t ask him how much the insurance costs, because he hasn’t the first idea.”
    “Fine,” I said, scrabbling to make amends. “Tell me what I can talk to
you
about, then?”
    He looked at me quizzically.
    “Dogs?” I suggested. “Ibizan clubs? Rhubarb?”
    The corner of Robert’s mouth twitched, but the rest of his face remained impassive. “I’m sure we’ll find something to chat about.” He gestured toward a spiral staircase leading downward. “I’ll go first, give you something to fall on.”
    “Oh, wow! A spiral staircase!” I said before I could stop myself. “Aren’t they meant to go clockwise, so noblemen could sword-fight up them? Or was it down them?”
    Robert looked up from three steps down, and I felt the shrewd McAndrew eyes taking me in. I couldn’t quite read them.
    If I’d met him in a bar in town, I’d have put Robert well out of my league. His clothes were casual but expensive, his general aura urbane and confident. Whatever he did for a living, he was in charge. His only obvious flaw was rather wonky teeth. But there was a funny vibration about him—not nerves, not awkwardness, just a sort of … not quite wanting to be there—that made a tiny chink in his polish.
    “They go left so the chambermaids can hold the chamber pots in their right hands.”
    “Really? I suppose it does make sense—”
    “No,” he said. “I just made that up.”
    *
    We clicked down a stone corridor lined with cobwebbed servants’ bells for various bedrooms, studies, games rooms, bathrooms, nursery.
    “Are those still in use?” I asked, thinking of Mhairi’s instruction to ring if I needed anything.
    “You’ve an electric one.”
    I thought it was a bit odd that we were dining in the cellar when there was bound to be a perfectly good baronial dining hall, but maybe they’d done up the kitchens as a big basement diner.
    We passed several butler’s pantries before we came to the kitchen. I assumed it was the kitchen, anyway; it was the only room with a thin sliver of light beneath the door. I wrapped my cardigan more tightly round myself as Robert pushed his way in.
    “Punctuality costs nothing,” said Duncan, tapping his watch. “Not you, Evie, you’re very welcome.”
    I did a double take.
    No gleaming candelabra. No dining table. No butler.
    Instead, round a long scrubbed pine table sat Duncan and Ingrid McAndrew and Sheila Graham. Sheila was still in the same twinset and skirt, but Ingrid was wearing a mushroom-colored tracksuit, and Duncan had changed into a blue velvet smoking jacket and a hat with a tassle.
    If you didn’t count Duncan’s bizarre hat, I was the only one who’d dressed up. My expression froze, along with the rest of me.
    “Good Lord, Evie, you must be a warm-blooded girl, wearing a dress like that!” barked Duncan. I was still thinking what on earth to say to that when he turned to Robert and added, “
She
obviously doesn’t feel this terrible cold you’re always whining on about.”
    “I’m not whining,” said Robert—heading for the chair nearest the Aga, I noted. “I’m just pointing out that there are parts of this bloody freezing house that you probably couldn’t legally keep animals in.”
    They didn’t dress for dinner!
Robert could have
said
something when he saw me, for God’s sake. He could have
told
me that everyone else would