Free The Vintage Girl by Hester Browne Page B

be bundled up to the nines when I still had time to go and get several cardigans. We were eating in the
kitchen
!
    “Evie, that’s a beautiful dress,” said Sheila, noticing my discomfort. “And orange and black to match the Kettlesheer tartan—did you know?”
    Ingrid’s face dropped. “Oh, Evie, you needn’t have bothered,” she said. “We never dress for dinner. I mean, we dress in that we put more clothes
on
 …”
    “This? Oh, it’s nothing special,” I lied. “I, er, have thermal underwear underneath.”
    “Jolly sensible,” said Duncan. “Be prepared.”
    “Come and sit here, where it’s warm,” Ingrid said, getting up to give me her own seat. “And let me get you a drink,” she went on, pushing a glass in front of me. “Red? White?”
    “Wow, are these Georgian?” I forgot my annoyance in a nanosecond. The table might have had generations of servants who sat round it, but the place settings were fit for a duke: big porcelain plates with gold rims and purple thistles flanked by heavy silver cutlery.
    Like the kitchen, it was a funny old mixture of fancy and plain, but I was completely charmed. It had atmosphere, with its worn stone flags and polished brass pans sitting next to a very modern KitchenAid mixer. There’d been some hustle and bustle in here over the years, I could feel it.
    “You tell us, Evie!” Duncan said at once. “We’ve got about a hundred upstairs—worth much, do you think?”
    “Dad, Evie’s already valued half the tat in Rennick tonight,” said Robert. His voice was light, but his eyes were warning. “Give her an hour off, will you?”
    “Tat? Tat!”
    Duncan glared at Robert and I was reminded of the painting in my room of two stags glowering at each other in a handbags-at-dawn standoff.
    Sheila Graham offered me the bottle of wine just as Ingrid McAndrew closed her eyes and reached for her glass in one practiced movement.
    Normally, I didn’t drink much in new places (I had a bad habit of getting rather mystical about people’s valuables, which was embarrassing if they’d only just bought them), but the sudden frost in the air had nothing to do with the conditions outside, and I pushed my glass toward Sheila. She filled it with an almost inaudible sigh and a conspirational wink.

Seven
    I was woken the next morning by a strange smell—the sort of burning-rubber whiff you get when you don’t take the plastic off a microwave-ready meal properly.
    I pulled the four-poster’s heavy curtain aside, ready to face the bright Scottish sunlight streaming into the room, and found myself staring into the eyes of a burly black Labrador bearing a silver teapot on its back.
    I squawked and jerked backward into the pillows, nearly knocking over the water jug on the bedside table.
    Once the room swam into focus, however, I realized that the dog was stuffed, and a solid mahogany breakfast tray had been placed on a small table behind it. I wasn’t surprised that someone had come in and left it without me noticing; the drapery was so thick the Scots Guards could have piped the breakfast in without disturbing me.
    I sniffed warily. The smell was coming from beneath a silver dome. Next to it was a battered silver pot of coffee, and some milk, and a bowl of solid oatmeal that you could stand a spoon up in. There was no sugar, just a small bowl of salt. Proper Scottish porridge, in other words.
    And—I leaned over and lifted the dome with some trepidation—kippers.
    To be perfectly honest, kippers were one of those things that I always liked the
idea
of more than the reality. These looked as if they’d been freshly scraped off the outside of a trawler. But on the other hand, they were sitting under a silver dome on a crested porcelain kipper plate. With kipper knives and some kipper implement I’d never even seen before.
    How often did you get the chance of a breakfast-in-bed that crossed over with the life of Queen Victoria?
Not
very often.
    Gingerly I maneuvered the tray