Tidings of Great Boys (17 page)

“The same companies who aren’t paying their dividends?”

Mummy ignored him. “All we’d need are a few adjustments, like extra bathrooms and a first-class restaurant kitchen with a
chef. We have a salmon stream, so that would appeal to the anglers. We could charge hundreds of pounds for a week’s stay.”

“And where would we be in the meantime? In the cellar?”

“Of course not. We’d stay in the family wing. You know as well as I do that the entire east wing has been unused for years.
With a little fixing up, the guests could use those rooms to sleep in, we could open up the ballroom as the corporate meeting
center, and the sitting room and music room could be used for what they’ve always done.”

A pause, and then Dad said, “You’re making awfully free use of the first person plural.”

Mummy’s breath hitched. “I suppose I am. The excitement of the moment.”

“But it doesn’t mean anything.”

“It… it could.”

“Ah. The price of my agreeing to have my home butchered by the Society for Self Sustaining Estates is that my wife comes back
to it?”

Mummy gasped. I heard a rush of quick footsteps on the carpet, and then the far door slammed.

A large, heavy book landed on the library table with a thud like a clap of thunder. And under his breath, my father swore
at himself in the most colorful Scots I’d ever heard him use.

I didn’t know he even
knew
those words.

Well. Weren’t things just peachy on the MacPhail home front? I had no idea how to manage my parents. But the sudden slam of
Granddad’s book had jolted something loose in my brain. For how many months had I been drifting along, envying people like
Shani and Carly, who knew exactly what they wanted to do with their lives the moment they graduated?

Too many. I didn’t want to go back to London and float from one party to the next until some boy with a title and an overbite
proposed. Nor did I want to go to an American college—unless one of my lassies was there for moral support.

Dad wanted me to go to uni in Edinburgh and study medicine. Well, I’d go him one better.

What I really wanted most of all was to stay right here and live at Strathcairn. And what better way to do that than with
an M.B.A. in business management, with a minor in tourism? Because the Managing Director of the brand-new Strathcairn Hotel
and Corporate Retreat Centre would need nothing less.

FROM
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H
OW DID MY LIFE, which used to be completely in my control, get so scary and unmanageable in the space of a week?

The end of the year was all about leaving the old behind and embracing the new. It was about cleaning one’s house, physically
and metaphorically. But I didn’t think that extended to being left behind by my old village friends, who didn’t seem to be
speaking to me at the moment, or to the prospect of being tossed out of said house by the shrinkage of nameless investments
I knew nothing about.

Yet. I was going to fix that as fast as I could write a university application.

The one new thing I would’ve loved to embrace—Alasdair—was a lost cause. He’d taken to hanging about with Gabe and taking
bracing walks across the heath and through the woods. The two of them had even cleared the snow off the lake, though by the
time they’d gone ten feet out onto the ice, it was crystal clear that one more inch would result in them both going through.

Ice skating was not going to be on our holiday agenda. Just as well. There was plenty of thin ice round here without the real
thing.

Even my intrepid team of party planners was running into snags.

“I’ve called in every favor I or my parents have on two continents,” Lissa moaned over tea on Tuesday. “And still I can’t
come up with a band to play here on Thursday night.”

“What?” Carly said, deadpan. “The Kills are busy?”

“Totally booked. I tried twice.”

“Lissa. I was kidding.” Carly put down her wedge of Christmas cake, glistening with nuts, cherries, and probably a bit of
Dad’s terrible whiskey. I knew for a fact that Mrs. Gillie put it in her cakes just to get it out of the pantry—which was
good, because rumor had it the cakes tasted much better than the whiskey.

“I wasn’t.” Lissa looked down the list in her phone. “I tried Hot Chip and Duffy too, but no luck. I’ve been through the UK
record labels, the Celtic Music Society, and now I’m down to Edinburgh DJs and country-dance groups.”

“Which will be booked,” I pointed out. “Did you ask Mummy who she had for our last party?”

Lissa nodded. “The Battlefield Band, who are booked through 2011.”

“Oh. At this rate, Gillian will be playing for us.”

“I can do that.” Gillian brandished a mincemeat tart like a conductor’s wand before popping it into her mouth. “Have sheet
music, will travel.”

“You could always try your friend Anna Grange in Edinburgh.” Daddy came in from his study and snagged a piece of Christmas
cake. I poured him a mug of tea and splashed milk into it before I handed it to him. “Someone told me she’s in a band.”

“I’m not hiring a bunch of amateurs to play Hogmanay at Strathcairn, Dad,” I told him. “We have a reputation to uphold.”

Though Anna
was
a pretty good guitarist. She’d dropped out of school last year, but she’d managed to score some gigs in town—enough to finance
her own flat, anyway. Hmm.

“I can get online and do some research,” Lissa offered. “What’s the name? The band will probably have a MySpace with some
clips on it.” I told her, and she keyed it all into her iPhone.

Patricia and Mummy came in, windblown and shivery.

“Wow,” Patricia said, pulling off gloves and a knitted hat. “It’s cold out there. What do we have here? Ooh, mince tarts.
My favorite.”

Gillian put a couple on her plate and took another for herself. “Did you go for a walk?”

“More like a plow through drifts.” Patricia poured a mug of tea and gulped it to warm her insides. “I’m sure I burned off
two tarts’ worth of calories in advance.”

“This is a guilt-free zone,” Carly informed her. “Have some cake.”

Patricia laughed. “That’s what you can put in the brochure. ‘Indulge yourself in Scotland’s only guilt-free zone.’”

“Brochure.” Dad’s gaze swung from Mummy’s tousled hair to Patricia’s face. “What brochure?”

“Nothing, Graham.” Mummy gave Patricia a glance that plainly said
stow it
. “It’s just talk.”

“I thought I made it clear there wasn’t going to be any talk on that subject.”

“What subject?” I asked, all big eyes and innocence.

“Nothing.” Dad picked up his mug. His knuckles turned white as he gripped the handle.

“It could be something,” Mummy muttered under her breath, but since she was clattering cutlery for Patricia, I don’t think
anyone else heard.

“Nothing I care to discuss in front of our friends,” Dad said more loudly.

“Even if it means saving the ranch?” Patricia didn’t back down an inch. I glanced at Lissa and saw my own trepidation in her
eyes. Two immovable forces. One of them had to give—but did it have to be two days before the party, when all of us were stressing?

“I will not discuss our personal concerns in front of our guests,” Dad said. “Or with them.”

“Fine with me,” Patricia said with a shrug. “But you might want to think about it. From what Meg has told me about the finan—”

“That’s enough!” Dad slammed down his mug so hard, the forks jumped. He pushed back from the table and strode out of the kitchen.
Down the corridor, I heard the door to the kitchen garden thud closed.

“He’s gone to be with the hens,” I said into the silence.

“He’d make better company for ostriches,” Mummy said through stiff lips. “He’s as good at burying his head in the sand as
they are.”

“I don’t think ostriches actually do that,” Gillian said thoughtfully. “I think they—”

“The point is, he doesn’t want to talk about—whatever it is.” I caught myself just in time. “What is it, anyway?”

“I told you,” Mummy reminded me. “Dad doesn’t want to talk about turning the place into a first-class hotel. Not that I can
blame him. But if we don’t do something soon, the Inland Revenue will come along and take the lot.”

“This place would make a great hotel,” Carly said. “It’s straight out of a fairy tale. Or a dream.”

“A nightmare, more like.” Mummy turned her mug round and round in her hands. “It costs a fortune to run. When we had a fortune,
that wasn’t a problem. But now, with things the way they are…” Her voice trailed away, and she seemed to catch herself. “But
Graham is right on part of it, at least. I shouldn’t burden you girls with it. We have a party to plan.” Her voice took on
the false brightness of someone trying to convince a group of children that Pin the Tail on the Donkey is fun.

“Mummy,” I said slowly. “Don’t treat us like we’re twelve. These girls have taken on more than you can imagine and come out
on the winning side.”

The brightness faded and her gaze rested on Carly. “I know.”

“Look at me, for instance,” Shani said suddenly. “I came this close”—she held her thumb and forefinger apart half an inch—“to
getting engaged to Rashid. But I said no. And then what happened?”

“What?” Mummy sipped her tea.

“Shani,” I said quickly, “she and Patricia don’t know. None of us have said.”

“That’s okay.” Shani hitched her chair closer to the table, and my mother and Patricia echoed her body language. I don’t think
they even knew they were leaning forward to close the circle of intimacy.

“I said no to the prince, and because of that, his dad, the Sheikh, pulled his stake in my dad’s company. Since it was forty
percent, the company couldn’t hold up, and the whole thing folded. My parents lost everything. Seven-million-dollar mansion,
antique car collection, courtside seats at the basketball game, couture clothes. Everything.”

Slowly, my mother’s hand fluttered up to cover her mouth. “That’s dreadful,” she whispered. “But it’s just as dreadful that
they asked you to do such a thing.”

“Where are your parents now?” Patricia asked.

“Still in Chicago, living in a two-bedroom cottage in the old neighborhood where my grandmother used to live. Dad salvaged
one division of his company, and he’s running that on a shoestring.” She took a breath. “But what I’m getting at is that they
didn’t plan for the contingency that I’d say no. They did the ostrich thing, or maybe it was just a blind spot. I didn’t ask.
But they didn’t have to lose it all. They could have arranged it so the Sheikh’s pulling out wouldn’t have hurt so much. Diversified,
you know?”

“She applied to Harvard Business School,” I said in an aside to my mother. “She knows her stuff.”

“Evidently. So how did you come to be here?” she asked Shani. “How can you afford to stay at Spencer?”

“I had a nest egg,” Shani said smoothly. Okay. The necklace and what had happened to it were going to stay a secret. Good
to know. “I’m financing my own education now, and my friends here”—she glanced round the table, smiling—“helped me out with
the plane ticket.”

“My ticket, too,” Carly put in.

“A nest egg,” Mummy repeated. “So you took your own advice. You planned for another contingency.”

“Not… exactly. But it worked out that way.”

“So if you were in our position, what would you do?” I asked.

Shani’s lashes flicked in Patricia’s direction. “I’d do exactly what Lissa’s mom is saying. If you can get funding from the
state or whatever, and you can turn this place into a hotel, I bet it would be a huge success. I mean, look. You can’t go
on the way you have been. Something has to change, or you’ll lose it.”

“In a nutshell, yes,” Mummy said with a sigh. “I wish you could convince Graham of that.”

“Not very many people know what happened to me,” Shani said with quiet dignity. “You’re welcome to tell him about it if you
think it would help.”

Mummy held her gaze for a long moment. “Contrary to what Lindsay says, I heard about you and the prince. It was all over the
papers here, and I don’t know how many Web sites. I can see why they were so interested.”

“Why?” Shani broke open a fat, fluffy scone and reached for the bowl of Devonshire cream. “I could never figure that out.”

“Because, my dear, you would have made a fabulous princess.”

Carly, Gillian, Shani, and Lissa exchanged the kind of glance that tells you they’d just gotten a huge giggle out of something.

I knew what it was. The whole “daughter of the King” thing. And it made me feel more left out of the joke than ever.