The Secret Gift (31 page)

“Och, no, miss. But she’d be upset if I charged you even a pence fer it. You’re like a cousin to us, Mackay to Mackay, and family helps family. Just wait here and I’ll fetch it fer you.”

Jamie vanished into the back of the store and came back a few minutes later with a parcel wrapped in white butcher’s paper. “Just pop it in a pot of water and boil it for at least three hours. You can toss in some tatties the last hour to serve wit’ it. Tha’s what Mum always does.”

Libby eyed the package doubtfully. “And this, what did you call it,
haggis
... it’s good?”

“Och, there isna a Scotsman who doesna appreciate the warmth of a good haggis in his belly for his supper. ’Tis how my mum got my da to marry her. She makes the best haggis in all o’ the Highlands.”

It was all the convincing Libby needed. After all, Robert Burns had composed an entire poem to a haggis, hadn’t he? So whatever it was, it must be good. She leaned forward and kissed Jamie on the cheek. “Thank you, Jamie. You just saved my life.”

The boy blushed, smiling broadly as she turned, grabbed up the sack of other things she’d purchased, and hurried out the door.

Three hours to cook it, he’d said. If she hurried, she’d have just enough time.

Jamie was still grinning when his mother came out from the back of the store a few moments later. “Who was that, lad?”

“Oh, just Miss Hutchinson. She was in a bit of a state without anything for supper for the laird and his guest. So I gave her your haggis. I dinna think you’d mind. She was most appreciative.”

He rubbed his cheek where Libby had just kissed him. It was the first time he’d ever been kissed by a girl, other than his mother, that is. He couldn’t wait to tell it to the lads.

With his mum having returned, Jamie was free to go off and meet his friends. He was already grabbing his coat and heading for the door.

“Does she know how to prepare it?”

But Jamie was already out the door.

“Jamie! D’you hear? I asked did you tell her how to prepare it?”

“Aye, I told her, ma. Told her to boil it at least three hours, just like you do. I’m off to meet the lads at the football pitch. I’ll be home afore dark.”

He turned, the door slamming behind him.

“Jamie? Jamie Mackay! You did tell her to prick the skin with a fork, aye?”

He was halfway down the street, running with his coattails flying behind him, but Ellie swore she saw him waving his arm in response.

He’s a good lad, that Jamie,
Ellie thought as she went back to her account books.

Graeme stood outside the kitchen and waited, listening at the door.

He heard:

A spoon stirring.

A drawer opening.

A pot boiling over.

And something that sounded rather like a very nasty curse word.

He knocked softly.

“Libby? Is there anything I can do to help?”

“No!” Her voice sounded frantic. “It’s nearly ready. Why don’t you take your mother into the dining room and open a bottle of wine?”

“Well, since I don’t know what we’re having for supper, I’m not certain which to choose, white or red.”

He waited for her reply.

“Red. I think. Yes, definitely red.”

Graeme looked at the door, shaking his head as he turned for the dining room.

His mother was already there, waiting.

“Is everything all right?”

“She assures me that whatever it is we’re going to be eating is very nearly ready.”

He took a bottle of Bordeaux from the wine rack.

In the kitchen Libby checked the stove timer. Ten more minutes.

Everything was going according to plan. She had the salad plates on the tray, ready to take into the dining room. The potatoes were cooked and mashed with butter and a dash of salt. There were freshly baked rolls (she’d found some in the deep freeze, bless Flora’s heart) and a sliced apple cake for dessert.

All that remained was the haggis.

Libby lifted the lid off the pot, took a peek.

When she’d first gotten back from the market and had opened the white butcher’s wrap, she’d thought perhaps Jamie had played a trick on her. First, the round, melon-shaped, meat-filled sack had looked too small to feed three people. But the longer it boiled, the more it expanded, so Libby had decided to allow it to cook the full three hours that Jamie had suggested just to make sure there would be enough.

As soon as the timer dinged, Libby grabbed the tongs, lifted the lid off the pot, and—

Graeme nearly dropped the wine bottle when there came a sound much like an explosion from the vicinity of the kitchen.

He turned and ran, with his mother falling in close behind him.

“Libby, are you ... ?”

The scene that met him on the other side of the kitchen door defied description.

Libby was standing in the center of the room, the front of her pale blue blouse splattered with a dripping, brown, unidentifiable substance. That same stuff looked to have been flung across every wall and counter, every cabinet, and every window, reaching as high as the ceiling in some places. Even as he stood there, a blob of it dropped from overhead, landing on his arm. It was still warm. He swept it from his sleeve with a finger, took a sniff.

Haggis.

Libby wasn’t saying a word. She just stood there, blinking as if she were shell-shocked.

Or perhaps the more appropriate description would be
haggis
-shocked.

The look on her face was so defeated, Graeme didn’t know what to do or what to say.

Blessedly, his mother stepped forward, ever the able general.

“Oh, heavens. You forgot to prick the haggis before boiling it, didn’t you, dear?”

When Libby just looked at her, the evidence of that very statement spewed across her nose, the countess took her hand and led her from the room, calling back as they went, “Graeme, can you see about getting a bucket of some soapy water and start scrubbing the stuff from the walls? We’ll be back shortly.”

Gemma led Libby up the stairs to her bedroom, then shoved her into the bathroom. “Why don’t you let me have those clothes, dear, so I can get them soaking to keep the stains from setting?”

A few minutes later, the door opened a crack, and Libby’s arm poked out, holding the haggis-splattered garments aloft. The countess listened for the sound of the bathwater running, then headed back to the kitchen, where she found Graeme on his hands and knees scrubbing the stuff from the tile floor.

She’d certainly raised him right.

She dumped Libby’s clothes in the kitchen sink and filled it with cold water, then turned to her son. “Now, you get in your car and see if you can find something to salvage this supper. That girl will be feeling utterly dejected when she comes back down here, and so I want every reminder of this debacle gone before she does.”

“The café is closed. But I think there’s a chip shop.”

“That’ll do. Now go whilst I see to this mess.”

As a long-standing member of the House of Lords, Gemma Mackenzie wasn’t at all afraid of getting her hands dirty. She’d been raised on her father’s Scottish estate, and he, knowing that she would be the one to assume his mantle when he was gone, had given her a childhood hands-on education that had even included the yearly dipping of the sheep. The floor was easy enough to clean, but when it came to the ceiling, particularly above the stove, Lady Abermuir had to use a bit more elbow grease.

By the time Graeme returned with three fish-and-chip takeaway suppers in a plastic sack, the place looked as if the past several hours had never occurred.

“All right,” the countess said, wiping her wet hands on a towel. “You set those suppers up in the dining room as if they are a bloody Christmas feast. Use the best china you can find. Light some candles. I’ll be right back down.”

When she got to Libby’s bedroom door, she knocked softly. “Dear, may I come in?”

She opened the door at the responding muffled “yes” and found Libby, freshly washed and dressed, sitting on her bed. She looked as if she wanted nothing more than to crawl under the duvet and hide.

Gemma sat on the bed beside her. “You know, when I was first married to Graeme’s father, I wanted to bake him a birthday cake. Only I couldn’t try just any birthday cake. Oh, no! It had to be a chocolate souffle with whiskey crème sauce. So, of course, much to my horror, the thing came out of the oven flatter than an oatcake. But my husband, treasure that he was, insisted it was fine, even went on to suggest that I had created some wonderful new delicacy that would be the envy of the French culinary world. Oh, did I forget to mention that his entire family was there for the celebration as well? So what else could I do? He had to have something for his birthday cake, so I went along with it, drizzling this flat brown Frisbee of a thing in whiskey crème sauce in hopes to camouflage my dismal failure. Only, to compensate for the disaster of the souffle, I had doubled the amount of whiskey, half thinking that if I could get them all drunk they’d never remember it. But when I went to light his birthday candles so he could make his wish ...”

Libby looked at her. “It burst into flame?”

“Precisely, dear. Singed the poor man’s eyebrows clear off.”

Libby fought valiantly to hold back a smile.

“Go ahead and laugh. I’ve long since gotten over it. Lord knows, it’s been told around the Christmas table every year since.”

The countess looked at her. “So you see, dear, nothing is as bad as it seems. Someone, somewhere, has always done something far, far worse. I promise you, you will look back on this ... this
haggisaster
one day and laugh, too.”

Libby looked at her, smiled. “Thank you.”

The countess gave her a hug. “Now, why don’t you come downstairs with me, and I’ll tell you about the time Graeme’s brother, Teddy, convinced poor unsuspecting four-year-old Graeme that their father’s prized polo cup was actually a tiny silver loo? And, even better, that he should make use of it smack in the middle of our summer garden party ... ?”

Two days later, when Graeme walked into “The Blue Room,” he was greeted by a blast of bagpipe music blaring from a small portable CD player. Libby’s feet, moving in time to the primitive drumbeat, were sticking out from underneath the piano.

“Ehm ... Libby?”

She didn’t hear him.

He tried a little louder. “Libby?”

Her feet just kept on air-dancing.

He knocked on the top of the piano as if it were a door. “Hello! Anybody home?”

“Oh ... good morning!”

She wiggled her toes at him, their polish almost as shiny as the beeswax she was so diligently applying to the carved legs of the piano. The pipe music quieted to a dim bellow.

“Isn’t this great? Young Jamie Mackay from the village store lent me his CD. I didn’t believe him when he said the louder you play it, the better it sounds, but you know, he’s right!”

Graeme stood back, crossed his arms, and smiled a wry grin. “It’s always been my opinion that listening to music whilst standing next to an instrument is usually a more enjoyable experience than lying underneath it.”

She poked her head out to look at him. “Oh, really? And have you ever actually tried lying under a piano?”

He thought about it. And a moment later, Graeme was sinking to the floor to join her.

A half hour, and some very rumpled clothing later, the CD came to a thundering finish and Graeme had to admit there was indeed a certain merit to the underside of a piano after all.

He was still smiling about it later that day as he rode along the rain-slick streets through London’s Mayfair district on his way to Gransborough House, the ducal family house in town.

“Oy! Lord Waltham!”

Graeme turned on instinct as he stepped out of the car and was greeted by the all-too-familiar and unwelcome sound of the shutter click from a photographer’s camera.

“Where’s yer lady friend, aye, m’lord?” said the man with the Minolta stuck to his face who was clicking the shutter incessantly. “Come on now ... give us a break, guv. What’s ’er name?”

Graeme knew the photographer, Giles Gilchrist, by name, a particularly smarmy scourge who had been responsible for some of the most invasive, most inappropriate photographs that had ever been snapped of the royal family and various other members of the British nobility. No level of human decency had ever managed to curb his ravenous appetite for publishing images aimed at nothing more than pure titillation. In fact, his badge of honor came from being one of those responsible for Sarah Ferguson’s downfall, by publishing those horrible photos of that Texan businessman sucking on her toes.

“Sod off,” Graeme grumbled, pushing past the paparazzi’s blinking lens, wishing he could plant his fist in the tosser’s face. But he couldn’t, because that would amount to an assault. Of course, the guy’s camera shoved two inches from his face, snapping a shot up his nasal cavity, wasn’t.

“We’ll find out who she is, anyway, m’lord. So you might as well just tell it to us now and be done with it ...”

Graeme gritted his teeth and made for the door, a volley of camera clicks popping behind him like rifle fire. The words “Take cover!” echoed through his thoughts, and he couldn’t help but feel like one of those soldiers in the old World War II movies who scrambled across cinematic black-and-white French fields ducking sniper fire.

Thankfully, the Gransborough butler had been expecting him and opened the door to admit him the moment he reached the step.

“Thank you, Paul. Perfect timing as always.”

“Good morning, my lord. Glad to be of assistance.”

Graeme quickly shed his raincoat. “You’re looking well, Paul. Have you been working out at the gymnasium again?”

Paul cracked a smile. “Not exactly, my lord.”

Thickset and balding and dressed in his formal black-and-white waistcoated uniform, he looked every bit the quintessential British butler. He’d been a faithful Gransborough servant since Graeme had been old enough to drool. But a fitness buff Paul was not.

Graeme looked down the hall that led to the center of the house. “Is he ... ?”

“In the library, my lord,” Paul answered, already anticipating his question, “reading the morning paper. He said you should go right up. Might I bring you a coffee? Espresso perhaps ...”