Nina stared. ‘I’m not a junior, and I’m definitely not single,’ she said flatly. Why the hell would he say that? Had Luke mentioned the arguments they’d been having recently over her dreams of a quiet Christmas together? Had they talked about it at the golf range before Luke flew out to Japan last month? That’s all they were, arguments. Things were still very much OK between them, even if Luke had struggled to call her much lately, what with the time difference and being so busy working with his Japanese colleagues.
Seamus ignored the fact she was on the verge of tears and furiously embarrassed about it.
‘To be frank, Nina, wecouldhave let you go. You’ve been relieved of your old accounts, but you’ve worked hard and I recognise that, and Mr Casson was adamant we reassign you. Think of it like this: you’ve been hand-picked to act as an ambassador for our company overseas. This is your chance to prove your worth…’
‘My worth? Mr Ryan, it sounds as though you’re saying if I don’t find a way of making us some money on this trip I may as well not come back?’
Seamus nodded and pulled a face that told her she wasn’t far from the truth. ‘You’ve made it this far in the company through your excellent networking, but now that… seems to have dried up, you must show us what you can do, on your own merit. This is the only such posting we have for you. If you mess this up, there’s no point coming back.’
Nina pressed her fingertips to her throbbing temples. How could Seamus know that for the last month the calls from the brands she’d been courting, hoping to work with them one day soon, had suddenly dried up? Even the start-ups she’d been getting to know hadn’t responded to her lately. She hadn’t told anyone, hoping it was just the holiday season keeping everyone busy and that they’d return her calls come January. Come to think of it, why had Luke delayed coming home from Japan for over a week now? Why had Fournival taken her only key to Luke’s apartment, her home? What on earth was going on?
She reached for the folder, trying hard to right herself in front of Seamus even though she felt her life capsizing.
The words on the pages before her swam a little under her blurry gaze, but she caught something about ‘wild, open countryside’, ‘remote location’, ‘extensive renovations’, ‘growing reputation’ and ‘Highland destination for unique crafting holidays’ and there was a photograph from an online magazine article headed ‘Scottish crafts heritage travel’ with a red-haired, rustic-looking man doing something arty with sticks outside a little white cottage in what looked like a sleet shower.
‘You’ll be going home. You’ll enjoy it,’ Seamus said, clapping his hands to his thighs, signalling the meeting was over. She hadn’t even been offered a pastry.
Nina thought of what she knew of Britain: the pebbly beaches and mellow sunsets of Brighton and Hove, the views over the gentle South Downs, and the homely feel of being beside the seaside and looking out across the Channel towards Dieppe and the sunny continent.
Back home, she’d never once ventured up North. She’d had everything she needed in Sussex; her mother, her younger brother; a gaggle of school friends, all the colour and busyness of Brighton nearby with its bars, spas and boutiques, and London only an hour away at weekends for some serious retail therapy.
The Scottish Highlands, she suspected, were nothing like that. They were rain-soaked and midge-infested. Or did the winter storms kill off the midges? She had no idea, but she knew for sure she wasn’t a wellingtons and waterproofs kind of woman.
‘Come on,’ cajoled Seamus, as he stood and walked back to his desk, offhandedly drawling to her over his shoulder. ‘Buck up. It’s the Highlands, not Mars. How different can it be? Oh, and I’ve asked HR to furnish you with a cubicle down on four with your new colleagues in Creative. I’m sure you’ll appreciate the opportunity to work more closely with them.’
When Nina returned to her office there was no sign of Fournival, but there was a cardboard crate with the meagre contents of her desk inside, along with her complete set of Louis Vuitton luggage from her dressing room at home, now lined up by the door with a thin-looking envelope tucked through one of the handles with her name inscribed on it in Luke’s rushed, sharp handwriting.
The tears brimmed in her eyes as she grabbed for the door handle of her office, desperately needing its sanctuary, a place where she could cry unseen, but the door was locked. So she wheeled her luggage to the bathrooms and, once alone inside, opened Luke’s cowardly farewell letter with her hand clamped over her mouth to stifle the sound of her sobs.
Chapter Three
A Scots’ Wassail
Beatrice watched as Atholl raised the bowl, steaming and brimming with wine, to the dark winter sky. His pale Celtic skin shone like pearl in the moonlight, warming to rich cream and amber in the shifting glow from the villagers’ flaming torches.
‘Wassail!’ he called out, and the crowd burst into whooping applause – all of them shivering and in varying degrees of inebriation, huddled together in the grassy backyard between Atholl’s little craft school above the coral beach and his willow fields.
Atholl passed the bowl to Kitty Wake, the beautiful Gaelic teacher, Beatrice’s new best friend, and now a permanent fixture in Port Willow since falling in love with Atholl’s brother, Gene.
Kitty, dressed in a long white gown with a green paper crown on her head that the children from the local primary school had made for their ‘Wassail Queen’, took a sip of the wine before shouting out a loud ‘drinkhail’, sending the crowd into an even louder frenzy.
All the while, the tall, slightly stooped, wide-eyed Gene Fergusson stood to one side, a tartan blanket bundled in his arms, half fretting that his beloved Kitty would catch a cold and half frozen in staring amazement that this red-haired, dazzling light of a woman actually loved him back.
Beatrice was responsible for that little bit of summer matchmaking and it gave her no end of pleasure to see her two friends now so in love. She surveyed the whole scene, smiling to herself as the villagers, who had fully embraced her as one of their own in the last few months, brought out their own bowls and vessels, filling them from bottles with wine and whisky and even, Beatrice noted delightedly, Irn Bru.
Kitty led them all in a Gaelic Christmas carol that Beatrice neither recognised nor understood, while the crowd dipped slices of toast and slabs of shortbread into their drinks and then lobbed them gleefully in amongst the willows, making Atholl run for cover towards Beatrice on the steps of the old But and Ben, now his fully functioning willow workshop and craft school.
Some of the older members of the wassailing party, including Seth McVie, the long-since-retired originator of the seal-spotting tourist boats down in Port Willow Bay, were reverently dipping white bread into alcohol and spearing the sopping slices onto the sturdiest willows, and meanwhile the singing swelled into a wild chant.
Beatrice was struck by the notion – as she often had been since she’d run away from her old life to this strange, beautiful, remote place in the West Highlands – that this scene could have played out at any time in the last ten centuries, even if old Seth’s bicycle clips and every single teenager’s phone were glowing and flashing in the dark. The whole effect was breath-taking, and Atholl made it even more so by reaching for her in the dark of the cottage doorway and pressing a kiss to her lips.
‘Well, do you think this is enough?’ she asked him, keeping her face close to his.
‘To appease Mother Nature and ensure a good crop next year? Who can say? I saw some of my cousin’s bairns from Skye in amongst the willows, scattering Jaffa Cakes as an offering. I’m no’ sure what Mother Nature will make o’ that.’ Atholl smiled, distracted by the look of his girlfriend, calm and quiet on the workshop step, dark hair splaying over her shoulders, her red bobble hat making her chilly pink cheeks look all the sweeter.
Her colour had come back to her over the autumn now that she was far away from her old, disjointed, buried life in England. She’d found a carefree peace that showed in the way she held her body and in the way she met her lover’s eyes.
The wassail had been her idea, and all she’d had to do was mention it to Atholl and he’d enthusiastically helped her organise the whole thing, steered by her organisational zeal and talent for seizing upon new opportunities to expand the inn’s offering. She was forever list-writing, researching and making things happen. It was one of the many things he loved about her.
