Waterfall Glen (12 page)

Archibald Cunningham winced at the mispronunciation but let it pass, saying only, “We’re listening.”

Kate knew that Carling was about to quote a figure, but hadn’t the slightest idea what it would be. Her heartbeat quickened and a slight sweat broke out on her brow. She hoped Carling wouldn’t notice, but knew deep down that he must because he was studying her so intently. Just as she’d sensed that Carling enjoyed watching Archibald Cunningham suffer in the moments before introducing
himself—that he’d deliberately let those moments drag on a little longer than was necessary—so she knew that he was doing the same thing now with her, and was deriving a similar enjoyment.

Finally Tony Carling said, “A quarter of a million pounds.”

Kate was glad she was sitting down. She had a little under twelve thousand dollars in her checking account, and it was the most money she’d ever had in her life. It took every ounce of composure she possessed to keep her face expressionless, but she couldn’t help from swallowing. She knew Tony Carling would have noticed, and that he’d know what it meant.

Just then the waiter came over with their drinks, but the three people sitting around the table barely noticed him.

Archie said to Tony Carling, “Quite frankly, I’d hoped your interest was going to be more serious than that.”

“Just how much more ‘serious’ were you
hoping
it was going to be?”

“Considerably more.”

“Well, quite frankly, perhaps you’d like to consider this: the estate can’t possibly be making money—”

Archibald Cunningham made as if to interrupt, but Carling stopped him with a dismissive gesture and the words, “You did say you wanted to be serious about this. Now, as I said, the estate can’t be making money and, frankly, I don’t see how it ever can in anything like its present form.”

“How do you know we don’t have plans to change it from its present form,” Kate said, but was sorry almost as soon as she’d spoken because she was aware of how lame and unconvincing she sounded.

Tony Carling gave a patronising smile that made Kate want to slap him, then said, “Call it an educated guess. The kind that’s let me build Yeoman Holdings up from scratch into a business that can buy a country estate that’s dying on its feet and provide the investment needed to give it new life.”

Kate had promised herself she wouldn’t say another word unless she had to, but she was too concerned about the fate of Finlay and Miss Weir, the crofters she’d never met, and the glen she’d fallen in love with to stop herself from asking, “What sort of’ new life’ did you have in mind?”

“The good life.”

“Care to be more specific?”

“Care to give me a reason why I should be?”

“Because I care about more than making money, Mr. Carling. I care about Glen Cranoch and the people who’ve lived in it all their lives and love it even more than I do. Is that a good enough reason?”

Carling took a drink of his Bacardi and Coke, then said, “We plan to turn the glen into a ski resort in winter, the lake into a water sports center in summer, and the little castle thing on top of the hill—”

“Greystane,” Kate said through gritted teeth.

“Whatever,” Carling said. “We want to run a chairlift
up to it and turn it into a visitor center with a restaurant, a tartan tat souvenir shop, and a token attempt at a museum.

“There are other glens we could do it in—let’s face it, they’re ten-a-penny in this part of the world—so there’s no point playing hardball with me because it’s my ball and I’ll just go and play with it somewhere else. But I imagine you don’t like messing around any more than I do, so I’m not going to pretend that Glen Cranock is anything other than our first choice. The slope and snowfall are right for winter sports; the depth and size of the lake are good for water skiing; and the little castle is pretty much straight out of a storybook.”

“I’d say all of that adds up to more than quarter of a million pounds,” Archibald Cunningham said frostily, trying to keep a professional calm in the face of the Englishman’s dismissive description of Glen Cranoch.

“It might have done if the estate was viable and you could make a go of it yourself,” Carling said. “But as it stands it’s a financial black hole, and I’m willing to bet that people won’t exactly be queuing up to pour money into it.”

“You don’t believe in beating around the bush, do you?” Kate said.

“Life’s too short. Too many other deals to make, places to go, people to meet.”

“What about the people who work in Greystane just now?”

Carling swirled the ice around in his drink, then said, “We’d be prepared to offer them positions appropriate to
their abilities.”

Kate thought about what sort of positions a man like Tony Carling would consider appropriate for Miss Weir and Finlay, and how long their pride would let them work for him. Not wanting to pursue that train of thought for too long, she addressed her next concern: “And what about the crofters and their families?”

“They’d have to move, of course,” Carling said without any trace of regret. “I’d be prepared to accommodate a handful of your people as a goodwill gesture, but the bottom line is that I’m running a business, not a charitable foundation, and I can’t run it around people who’re in the way.”

“All of this is purely academic as long as we’re talking about a figure in the region of the one you mentioned as an opening gambit,” Archibald Cunningham said quickly, before Kate had a chance to say anything.

By way of reply, Tony Carling took a checkbook and gold pen from the inside pocket of his jacket. He wrote out a figure on the first blank page before holding the checkbook up in front of Kate and then Archibald Cunningham. “No bargaining, no horse trading,” he said. “That’s as high as I’ll go.”

The figure on the check was £275,000.

“The offer’s good for ten days. If you haven’t asked me to sign the check by then I’ll tear it up, and when you do finally ask me to write out a check—and I think deep down we all know it’s a matter of’ when’ and not ‘if’—the number I write on it won’t be as big as that one. In fact, it won’t
even be as big as the first offer I made you.”

His point made, Carling put the checkbook back in his pocket, picked up one of the menus and said, “Now, why don’t we order?”

“Actually, I’d rather eat back at Greystane,” Kate said. She picked up her coat and scarf and walked out without even putting them on.

Behind her she heard Archibald Cunningham saying, “If you’ll excuse me one moment, Mr. Carling …”

Moments later the solicitor was at her side, saying, “Lady Kate, that was a little rude.”

“Are you talking about his behaviour or mine?” Kate said as she pulled on her raincoat.

“Lady Kate—” Archie said, making a token attempt to help her with the sleeves.

“He started it,” Kate said. She knew she sounded like a child, but couldn’t help herself.

“It’s nothing personal. It’s just how he does business.”

“Then how he does business sucks. He’s talking about spoiling somewhere unspoiled, not to mention turning people’s lives upside down.”

“I know you’re upset—”

“You’re damn right I am.”

“I understand why, but you have to think about yourself, not Finlay and Miss Weir and the crofters, however likeable they might be.”

“I won’t be able to think about myself in quite the same way in the future if I only think of myself right now, Mr.
Cunningham. I’m not sure that any amount of money would make up for that.”

“I understand, believe me I do, but you have to be realistic. What we’d like to do and what we’re actually able to do aren’t always the same thing, are they—and this is one of the times when they’re definitely different. Tony Carling might be unconscionably rude but, if you put that aside, I think he’s right. It is a matter of ‘when’ you sell, not ‘if’. It’s just a matter of time until your money runs out. It’s a question of whether you get a reasonable sum for the estate in the next week or so; or whether you have to sell it at a bargain-basement price a few months down the line—all the while prolonging the uncertainty of the very people you’re trying to protect, falsely raising their hopes of having a future in the glen.

“Selling now is a case of being cruel to be kind,” he told her. “I know that can’t be easy for you, because I think you’re too kind to be cruel for any reason, but that’s where I earn my money. You can say your goodbyes and fly back to America and I’ll handle the rest. My conscience will be clear, and yours should be, too, because there’s nothing else we can realistically do in the circumstances.”

Kate didn’t say anything.

“I have to tell him something, Lady Kate,” the lawyer prompted.

“Tell him I’ll sell … When I’m sure there’s no way I can turn the estate around and stop the crofters being thrown out of their homes; when there’s no way I can stop
the glen being turned into a tacky resort and Greystane being turned into a ‘tartan tat’ shop.”

“That was a most unfortunate turn of phrase,” Archibald Cunningham conceded.

“I’ll only sell to him when I’m absolutely sure there isn’t anything else I can do,” Kate said.

“By then you’ll be in no position to drive any sort of bargain.”

“I don’t care about the money, Mr. Cunningham. I’ve never had that sort of money before, so I won’t miss it.”

“But there’s no sense in throwing it away. The Cranoch is indeed a black hole, just like Carling said. There’s no point pouring good money into it after bad, Lady Kate.”

“I don’t think an unspoilt glen, a house that’s stood for four hundred years, and people like Finlay McRae and Miss Weir are a bad cause to spend my money on. And even if I don’t manage to turn things around, at least the money I’ve spent will have bought the satisfaction of knowing I did my best, and that’s priceless.”

“I almost hope for your sake that your money runs out soon, otherwise Yeoman really might lose interest.”

“No, Mr. Cunningham, Yoeman won’t.”

“How you can be so sure?”

“For the same reason I’m sure about not selling unless and until I absolutely have to: because, whatever he might say, deep down Tony Carling knows what I know—glens like The Cranoch aren’t ten-a-penny. In fact, I don’t think there’s anywhere else quite like it,” she told him, then turned
on her heel and walked away to find Finlay McRae.

Dawn the next day found Kate dozing fitfully in the back pew of Greystane’s chapel.

After lying awake for hours in the four-poster bed she’d slept so soundly in the night before, she’d finally dropped off into the most disconcerting nightmare. She dreamed she was in the banquet hall, looking at the row of gilt-framed pictures hanging on the wall. A portrait of herself hung in place of Lady Carolyn’s picture.

From behind her she heard derisive laughter and turned to see Tony Carling sitting at the head of the table, raising a tumbler of Bacardi and Coke in a mock toast.

The door to the chapel swung open and the sound of howling dogs issued forth, taking up where Tony Carling’s laughter left off.

Stumbling through to the chapel she saw Finlay dressed as a minister standing behind the pulpit. “This is what they call progress!” he shouted to a congregation of sheep dogs sitting up in the pews.

The canine congregation started whimpering and cowering, and when Kate turned back to the pulpit it was no longer occupied by Finlay but by a grotesquely aged parody of Miss Weir. Their eyes met, and Miss Weir screamed, “Damn you for what you’re about to do, Lady Kate Brodie! May you never know another moment of love in your
godforsaken life.”

In the moments after waking from the frightful dream Kate was so convinced she heard howling in the chapel two storeys below that she got out of bed and padded down the narrow staircase in her oversize T-shirt to check that there weren’t any dogs sitting on the pews. She’d taken a seat in the empty chapel for a few moments, suddenly feeling the need to say a prayer to a God she barely believed in …

And the next thing she knew, someone was shaking her awake. Raising her head slowly, her neck stiff, she saw in the weak dawn light that the someone was Miss Weir.

“What are you doing down here at this time, lass?” the housekeeper asked. “It’s only just gone six o’clock.”

Kate rubbed her eyes and sat up, her body cramping in a dozen places as she did so. “I’m sorry, Miss Weir,” she said sleepily.

Miss Weir laughed. “It’s your house, Lady Kate. You can sleep on the table in the banquet hall, if you want. I was on my way to the kitchen to get breakfast started when I saw you slumped forward and was just concerned—aye, and curious too, about why a person would want to sleep on a hard bench when they’ve got a four-poster to lay their head down in.”

“I didn’t come to sleep,” Kate said. “I came to pray for inspiration. And, if I couldn’t get that, for forgiveness.”

Miss Weir put an arm around Kate and, in an uncharacteristically gentle voice, said, “I thought Finlay and I convinced you last night that you’ve nothing to feel
guilty about.”

On the drive back to the glen the night before Kate had told Finlay the gist of her meeting with Archibald Cunningham and Tony Carling.

She’d repeated it all again to Miss Weir when the three of them sat down for a late dinner in the banquet hall—Kate at the head of the big table, Finlay on her right, Miss Weir on her left, the dinner going cold on the plates in front of them. Finlay and Miss Weir put a brave face on it, but Kate was barely able to hold back her tears. She wanted to console them, but when she tried to find the words she finally started crying. The two of them ended up consoling Kate, and she’d suddenly been deeply ashamed. Wiping away her tears, she’d said, “Finlay, Miss Weir, please forgive me. I’ve just been offered more money than I ever dreamed I could have, for a place I hadn’t even heard of a couple of weeks ago. You must think I’m terrible crying like this. It’s just that… It’s just that what I would be giving up seems worth so much more than the money I’d be gaining … Worth so much more than any sum of money … And, more than that, it’s what I’d be doing to you and the crofters and the glen that bothers me.”