Recipe for Love (26 page)

Sarcastic as well as loud, thought Zoe, amused as well as annoyed. ‘Of course. If you follow me I’ll show you your room, unless you know the way?’ They might be frequent visitors, although judging by Fenella’s panic at the thought of their arrival they probably weren’t.

‘We never know where we’re going to be able to lay our heads,’ said Lady Gainsborough. ‘Only half this pile is actually habitable.’

‘Your room is delightful,’ said Zoe. She picked up several of the many small cases that now littered the hall and set off up the stairs.

‘So Fenella finally did the sensible thing and got some staff,’ declared Lady Gainsborough. ‘I never thought she’d do anything so intelligent. She’s got all these mad ideas but I expect you know all about
them
!’

Zoe didn’t feel in a position to comment.

‘Hmm,’ Lady Gainsborough went on as Zoe showed her the room. ‘Not too foul, I suppose.’ Zoe was thrilled by the effect of the flowers, the side lights which she’d thought to turn on, and the general effect of calm luxury the room gave.

Lady Gainsborough went on, ‘But of course we can’t share a bed. He snores.’

Zoe indulged in a moment of panic. ‘OK, I’ll just make up another room for you. Fen – Mrs …’ Fenella’s surname deserted her. ‘She didn’t say you needed two rooms.’

Lady Gainsborough snorted. ‘It didn’t used to be so bad. I probably should have mentioned it,’ she added grudgingly.

‘I’ll just go and see which bedroom is most suitable,’ said Zoe. She’d need another quick snoop round this floor to find another room. She really hoped Gideon’s wouldn’t be the only usable option.

‘And if you can bring up a bottle of whisky and some glasses that would help,’ her ladyship went on.

‘I’ll ask Gideon,’ said Zoe.

Lord Gainsborough arrived in the bedroom before she could get out of it.

‘Can’t sleep with her ladyship, she snores like a train,’ he announced. Gideon, who was carrying the rest of the many cases, gave Zoe a look that could easily have sent her into fits of giggles.

‘I’m just arranging another room,’ said Zoe. ‘I didn’t know you needed separate ones. And Gideon, could you bring up a bottle of whisky and some glasses.’

‘And if the fireplace actually functions, which would be a small miracle, maybe you could light the fire up here?’ Lady Gainsborough added.

‘No. The fireplace is out of action. The chimney needs attention,’ said Zoe swiftly as a vision of her and Gideon trailing up and down the stairs with buckets of coal added to the horror. ‘Excuse me, I’ll just sort another bedroom for you.’

It turned out that the only other remotely suitable room on this side of the house
was
Gideon’s. He could have the little single room at the back she decided. She had her
room
in the cowshed still. She didn’t feel Lord and Lady Gainsborough would appreciate Gideon and her sharing a bedroom. Every floor creaked; they’d be sure to hear if they tried a midnight tryst. Her heart lurched. It would be too cruel if they were kept apart by Fenella’s vile in-laws.

Zoe thanked her stars that she’d found where the airing cupboard was earlier and she was extremely relieved to find lots and lots of good quality bed linen in it. She supposed it was to do with having bridal suites with beds in them, and it didn’t take her long to assemble some bedding for the room where she and Gideon had shared so much. Lord Gainsborough could do without flowers.

She went back to the first bedroom where Rupert’s parents were now knocking back whiskies large enough to float a battleship.

‘I’ve got the other room ready,’ she said, envying Gideon for having escaped and Rupert’s parents for the strong drink.

‘Thank you,’ said Lady Gainsborough, who was obviously planning to keep the room with the sofa and chairs. ‘Now when could we eat? We don’t need much but we are hungry so if you could call us down when it’s ready? Half an hour do you? Fenella said she’d make a stew before we came so you could just heat some of that up. Oh, and a baked potato and some sort of green veg. No peas or beans though.’ She paused. ‘They make him fart.’

Zoe went down into the kitchen where Gideon was topping up her wine, having made himself a cup of coffee.

‘They want stew, baked potatoes and a green vegetable, not peas or beans, in about half an hour.’

Gideon nodded. ‘And you haven’t seen a stew?’

Zoe shook her head.

‘We could search the freezer.’

She nodded.

‘And defrost it in the microwave?’

She nodded again. ‘And if there’s nothing suitable in the freezer, pray to God there’s something green in the garden.’

‘But before you go looking … come here, you little gypsy.’

She had just gone into his arms for the second time when they were disturbed by a distant jangling. Zoe sighed. ‘They have a sixth sense, they know the minute we go near each other.’ She frowned. ‘That’s not the front door, is it?’

Gideon shook his head. The jangling continued. Then he laughed. ‘Look!’

Zoe looked at where he was pointing. An old-fashioned bell indicator showed one of the little windows waggling.

‘I don’t believe this!’ said Gideon. ‘I really don’t!’

‘I’d better go,’ said Zoe.

‘I’ll go if you like,’ said Gideon, apparently giving up on his plans for Zoe. ‘But there’s something I must—’

Zoe interrupted him. ‘No, I’ll go, but could you look in the freezer for the stew?’

‘Where is the freezer?’

‘Oh! Well, I think there’s a chest one in one of the sheds but otherwise the fridge freezer is in there.’ She pointed towards the scullery where the washing machine and fridge lived along side tins of olive oil and jars of jam.

‘I’m not going into any shed,’ Gideon warned her. ‘If I draw a blank, they’ll have to have an omelette.’

‘Or spaghetti. You know, that’s just what I fancy. A really plain spaghetti with just some olive oil and garlic.’

‘And a bit of chilli?’

Zoe nodded. ‘Oh yes. But we’ll have to wait. Now I must go and see what her ladyship wants.’

‘So the bell works, does it?’ said Lady Gainsborough. ‘We weren’t sure. So little does work in this barracks.’

‘What can I do for you?’ Zoe felt she was in a play. She knew she’d be tempted to curtsey when she left the room, even if that wasn’t what a real maid would do.

‘Can you bring some bottled water? I assume there is some? I have pills to take.’

Zoe glanced towards the bathroom wondering why she couldn’t float her pills down on whisky. ‘There are glasses. I checked.’

Lady Gainsborough shook her head. ‘Don’t trust the water here. I think the plumbing is probably all lead pipes.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Zoe. ‘Sparkling or still?’

‘Still please.’ Lady Gainsborough turned away, which meant she wouldn’t see if Zoe curtseyed or not.

As she ran downstairs Zoe was grateful there were bottles of water left from the filming. And if none of them still had water in them, well, the taps worked just fine. Personally, she didn’t care if Fenella’s mother-in-law died from lead poisoning or not. She hadn’t even had time to wonder how Fenella was doing at the hospital!

‘Nothing remotely stew-like in the freezer,’ said Gideon, ‘but I did find this in the fridge.’

It was a Pyrex bowl full of greying meat with some whole shallots and mushrooms sticking out of it. On the top was a bay leaf and a small bundle of sticks.

‘I bet Fen or Rupert made this, put it in here to cool right down and then forgot to put it in the freezer,’ said Zoe.

‘But when was it made?’ asked Gideon.

‘Smell it,’ suggested Zoe.

‘You smell it,’ said Gideon.

Wrinkling her nose in advance, Zoe sniffed. ‘It smells a bit winey. You try.’

Emboldened by Zoe’s reaction, Gideon took a proper smell. ‘I think it’s probably all right,’ he said eventually. ‘They probably won’t notice if it’s a bit off.’

‘OK, let’s put it in a pan and heat it up. But don’t ask me to eat it.’ Zoe, suddenly overcome with tiredness, yawned hugely. ‘Sorry. My early morning has got to me.’

‘It has been a long day.’ Gideon put his arm round Zoe’s shoulder and rubbed her arm. ‘Poor darling. We could tell “them upstairs” to take a running jump and fend for themselves. Quite apart from wanting to make love to you hard enough to loosen your teeth, I need to tell you something, but it’ll keep.’

Zoe hoped it was something nice and was quite happy to wait – for the mad passionate love-making too if she had to. ‘I promised Fen I’d look after them. And besides, it’s sort of fun. A challenge: can we make them happy?’

‘Nothing daunts you, does it?’ he said, his head on one side, with an expression in his eyes she didn’t have time to respond to. ‘No matter what happens, you come out fighting and win.’

‘I don’t know about that.’

‘But you always find a solution, you never just give up.’

Zoe considered. ‘Well, I always feel if you’ve started something – a job, a competition, even just cooking a meal – you might as well give it your all or why bother doing it at all?’

‘That’s always been my attitude,’ said Gideon as he selected a pan from the stand in the corner and put it on the heat. ‘I always wanted to be a food writer but I knew it wasn’t really a way to make a living so I did other things first. But I never lost sight of my ambition.’

‘And now you’ve achieved your dream.’

‘Not quite. I picked up other dreams along the way. As you know I want to really educate the public about food. I want to get the supermarkets on side so that a busy person doesn’t have to read the backs of every packet to check what’s in it, or where it comes from. They’ll know
they
can trust it to be ethically sourced.’ He tipped in the stew, which looked even more unappetising now.

‘That’s what I’d like for my deli. Ethical, delicious, and no one being ripped off along the way.’ She looked up at him, excited to find they shared something that was important to her. Then she looked at the stew. ‘Are you sure it’s OK? We don’t want to deal with them if they got food poisoning.’ The thought made her turn pale with horror.

Gideon, who’d been hunting round for a wooden spoon, looked at her. ‘That really would test your friendship with Fen and Rupert.’

She was loving this time together. They were like a team pitted against an enemy. She felt she could cope with anything if she had Gideon by her side.

Zoe sniffed the stew. ‘I’ll add a slug of wine. That should disguise any off tastes.’ She gave him a look. ‘I know you shouldn’t put wine into a dish and not cook off the alcohol but this is an emergency.’

He held up his hands in surrender. ‘I wasn’t going to say anything!’

Zoe nodded. ‘Good, then I’ll start the baked potatoes off in the microwave. I’ll crisp the skins in the oven. I can imagine the uproar if they thought the potatoes had been cooked in a microwave.’

‘But they can’t expect baked potatoes in under an hour.’

‘I don’t think they have any idea how long a baked potato takes to cook,’ said Zoe. ‘I don’t imagine they’ve ever set foot in a kitchen except perhaps to deliver something they’ve just shot.’

She was in the garden on the hunt for green veg, since the freezer contained exclusively peas, beans and sweet-corn, when Gideon called from the door. ‘Come in! It’s Rupert. He wants to talk to you!’

Clutching the colander full of green stuff to her, Zoe hurried to the house. She very much wanted to talk to Rupert too. How such a nice man could have such difficult parents was a mystery.

‘Rupert? How’s Fen? Has she had the baby?’

Rupert laughed. ‘Not yet, I’m afraid. She’s having an epidural in a minute though, so at least she won’t be in so much pain.’

‘But everything’s OK otherwise?’

‘Yes. Everyone’s being brilliant. But how are things at your end? Are my parents being a nightmare?’ Correctly interpreting Zoe’s silence as a reluctance to tell a man his parents were the guests from hell, he went on, ‘You can see now why poor Fen got in such a state about them. They insisted on coming to help with the baby though we’d have been fine on our own. Are they treating you like staff? Tell them you’re not! Don’t put up with being ordered about.’

‘It’s fine. It’s easier to be staff than try and be friends.’

‘Yes, well, I can understand that bit.’ Rupert chuckled. ‘Did you find the boeuf bourgignon?’

‘Oh, was that what it was? Yes.’

‘In the freezer? I made it a while ago now.’

‘No, in the fridge. But I think it’s all right. Smells OK now we’ve added some extra wine. Do you want to talk to your parents?’

‘No. I’ll ring Mater direct on her mobile.’

Zoe paused and then said, ‘Tell me, Rupert, please, that you do not really call your mother Mater.’

He laughed but didn’t answer immediately. ‘Only sometimes. Fen sends love, by the way.’

‘And mine to her! We’re thinking of you!’ Zoe suddenly found herself getting quite emotional at the thought of Fenella having her first child.

*

‘I really don’t want them eating dinner down here,’ said Zoe firmly when she’d let Gideon know there was no further news. ‘We’ll have to find somewhere else.’