Scotlander, page 16
Biting back the urge to bow and say, yes, sensei, she thought instead of the letter in her bag. She could read it now and figure everything out, but the simple truth was, she didn’t want to. Reading it felt final. Too final. As if, once she undid the adhesive, pulled out the letter, unfolded it and let the inevitable flow of tears plop down on the ink, her friendship with Valentina would really be over. Like a lightbulb burning its last, final rays of light and then . . . darkness.
‘C’mon.’ He bumped his shoulder to hers. ‘You look like you could do with some cow therapy.’
‘Cow cuddling is the new goat yoga!’ Willa pronounced, draping herself over one of Finn’s favourite girls, Heidi.
‘If you say so, dear.’
‘I do.’ She gave him a superior smile.
He pulled off his flat cap and shifted it back into place. If he were a poker player, this would definitely be one of his tells. ‘Your boots okay?’
‘Fabulous.’ Willa glanced down at the oversized, steel-toe-capped boots Finn had found for her up in the barn office. Orla’s presumably. She attempted a jazzy soft shoe number and ended up stumbling over her own feet. ‘I think the biggest hazard here is myself.’
He grinned at her, then wandered over to one of ‘his girls’. He knew all of them by name. Their tag numbers. Their calving history. Their due dates. Nicknames. All the calves they’d had. Their calves’ calves. ‘Just a wee hobby.’ Or so he claimed.
‘So, to be clear, this is a wee hobby you have here at the farm where you don’t live any more?’ It was a pointed question, and she felt a bit intrusive asking it, but he’d discombobulated her by being nice, so she had to regroup. It felt much safer disliking Finn than accepting him as an actually ally.
Trusting someone meant relying on them and the past few months without Val had been terrifying. Showed her just how deep loss could cut.
The simple fact was, leaning into her friendship with Val had made one thing very clear: Willa had never laid a foundation of her own in LA. She’d just borrowed someone else’s. And now that Val was gone, Willa was like the cartoon character stepping blindly off a cliff into—
‘You alright, there, lass?’
She dug her fingers into Heidi’s fluffy coat and began to scrub. ‘Boy, oh boy! They do love a good scratch behind the shoulders, don’t they?’
‘If cows had knickers to get into, this would be the way to do it.’
Willa hooted. ‘Is that how you get down with the ladies? Sidling up beside them and giving them a good ol’ back scratch?’
‘Aye,’ he said drily. ‘That’s exactly how I do it.’
‘Underneath all of your roughtie-toughtieness, you’re a bit of a softie, aren’t you?’
He barked out a laugh. ‘Depends upon what you’re using as a measure.’
‘A sponge?’
He snorted. ‘A chunk of granite, mebbe.’
It was her turn to snort. ‘Even granite turns into soft, fluffy sand given the right conditions.’
‘What? Being pulverised by my environment?’
‘Well . . . You did marry me even though you obviously think all of this superfan stuff is nonsense.’
‘Aye, well . . .’ His eyes cinched with hers. There was something there she hadn’t seen before. A vulnerability that suggested she was right. He had a big, kind heart and at least a little bit of it was looking out for her. The atmosphere between them switched from friendly banter to a warm, giddy feeling that seemed as if it had skipped right past flirting and straight to open desire. His teeth dragged along his lower lip. Her tongue swept along hers. He closed the space between them. She tilted her chin up to keep her eyes glued to his. And then her boobs buzzed.
Feeling twists of disappointment and relief, she answered the phone with her eyes still linked to Finn’s. ‘Bryony! What can I do for you this fine, sunny Los Angeles morning?’
Chapter Nineteen
Finn pulled up the zip on his wax jacket, grateful for its warmth. The sun had long since dipped below the horizon giving more room for the autumn chill to set in.
‘So . . .’ Orla drew out the word in a jolly sing-song as she took a big scoop of steaming cottage pie and charged Willa’s plate. ‘How was everyone’s day?’
The response was muted at best, apart from Alastair who shouted, ‘I’m pure done in, lass! Gie’us seconds on that grub, will ya?’
Orla tsked and told him he’d have to wait for all of the guests to be served so he turned his energies to translating what he’d just said to ChiChi.
If anyone had told Finn he’d be spending his October holidays participating in a handfasting ceremony with a lippy entertainment reporter from Los Angeles, he would’ve laughed until he wept.
And yet, here he was, among a crowd of folk in olden days gear, acting as if everything was perfectly normal. He still couldn’t believe they hadn’t figured out it was a set-up. Orla’s ‘genius’ plan to keep the farm ticking over until they got the broken harvester fixed. He was amazed no one had baulked when they found out the castle was a ruin, that they’d be staying in repurposed horse stalls. Not to mention the fact they’d literally been doing farm chores today. Sure, there’d been the handfasting ceremony and Orla had pulled it out of the bag with the AmDram costumes, but when they figured out the reason they were here was because their ‘Jacobean experience’ was paying for replacement parts for a modern day tattie harvester? It wasn’t worth thinking about.
He looked round the courtyard. A couple of folk were washing up at a small hand pump, others were queuing, tin plates in hand, waiting for steaming servings of cottage pie (Orla didn’t do itty-bitty modern-cuisine-type servings), a few more were already parked on stumps pulled up close to the firepit, visibly mustering the energy to offer a few words of thanks before they fell to eating. Even Willa, who’d kept up an impressive stream of sarcastic comments throughout the day, was now silent. She was, he was pleased to see, sitting near Gabe and Lachlan.
He had to hand it to Orla: if this were a painting, it would sing of days gone by. And while they all looked tired, no one looked unhappy. The tableau of weary tourists reminded him of the terrible paintings his mum used to pick up in car boot sales to hang in the barns so ‘the cows had something to look at through the winter’. Duncan had taken them all down when she’d passed. As if his mum’s bin-end purchases had offended him all along.
Finn framed the real life ‘painting’ with his hands. If it had a name, it’d be called Exhausted Workers Returning From the Fields. He cleared his throat. Something like that, anyway.
When he caught Willa looking at him, he turned his hands round and pretended he’d been picking dirt out of his nails.
She gave him a little smile then went back to eating. His focus stayed on his hands. They were not city slicker’s palms. They were work worn. Scarred in places, used to mucking in whenever and wherever they were required. Farming wasn’t for the precious, and, fair play, these folk, they weren’t complaining. Not one of them had asked to change out of their cumbersome, unfamiliar costumes. Or said they were too cold or that the work was too hard. Even Willa who, bless her, was in a permanent state of conflict with her bodice and who he knew for a fact had acquired some new blisters today.
As he ran his thumbs over the calluses on his palms, he caught himself smiling at a long-forgotten memory. He’d been ten, maybe. Eleven? His hands had been covered in blisters after a full day of mucking out the barn. He’d been all begritten, complaining loudly that he should be let off his evening chores because he was walking wounded. Fair enough, son, his dad had said. He’d turned to walk away as if the matter was settled, then turned back and asked him if he wanted happy cows. He’d said aye, ’course he did. The herd was brand new then. A ‘starter pack’ of three cows and calves bought down in Kirkcudbright, the ‘birthplace of the Belted Galloway’.
Next, his dad asked him if he wanted a baked potato for his tea . . . straight from the bonfire he’d just been tasked with putting together. He’d said aye, ’course he did. They were his favourite. And then his father had asked him if he’d wanted to feel the pride of knowing he’d been the one to make all of those good things happen . . . with his hands. Even though they were tired, and sore and the plasters kept coming off.
He’d said nothing then, but had wrapped his hands up with tape, pulled on a pair of oversized gloves and got to work. That evening’s baked potato still ranked up there as one of the best he’d ever had.
That night, as he, his mum and father were eating, his father renamed chores Farm Delights. He said if they were going to be doing something for the rest of their lives, knowing they’d never be able to cross off the final item on a to-do list because there would always be one more thing to do, he wanted it to sound fun.
In a weird way Willa reminded him of his dad. Always able to find the silver lining, even though this trip was clearly not what she’d thought it would be.
If he had the stomach for it, he’d ask her to put a spin on bringing his cattle to market.
Even thinking about loading up the girls knocked the oxygen out of him. Over twenty years of building the herd and in the time it took for a gavel to hit the auctioneer’s desk – poof! – they’d be gone. Then the pigs. Then the sheep. Everything would have to go. Feed prices were through the roof. And the return they got at market wasn’t worth it.
But if selling the animals meant they could get in the all-important harvest, it was a sacrifice he’d have to make.
Finn cleared his throat and, after a want some? glance from Orla, took a plate and joined the group by the fire.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever felt like such a weakling,’ Jules said with a stretch and a yawn. ‘And I haul twenty-five-kilo sacks of flour around all day.’
‘Dinnae listen to her. She’s absolutely brilliant.’ Blair gave Jules a friendly elbow in the ribs. ‘I’ve not seen someone tackle a bramble pile the size of a caravan with such ferocity before. Belongs on my rugby team, she does.’
They grinned at each other, then began showing off the various injuries they’d received courtesy of the brambles.
‘What about you, ChiChi?’ Rosa asked. ‘How’d you and Alastair get on?’
‘Well . . .’ ChiChi threw her unlawfully wedded husband a playful grin. ‘I think it would be fair to say that he is far better at dealing with dark matter than I am.’
After calls for an explanation, Alastair took over. ‘We needed to change the oil in the tractor and ChiChi here thought it’d be a great idea to step in the grease pan after I was finished.’ Amidst a chorus of Oh no!’s and Are you okay?’s Alastair continued, ‘You cannae see it, but she’s got an egg-sized lump on the back of her head.’ He shook his head, pointed at Gabe with his fork, then Jules, and, in a perfectly amiable voice said, ‘You lot are definitely injury prone.’
‘Hey!’ Lachlan protested. ‘Gabe didn’t knock himself—’
‘I’m fine,’ Gabe cut in.
Out of the corner of his eye, Finn caught Willa stiffen. She focused on her meal, missing Gabe putting his hand on Lachlan’s knee and giving him a small it-wasn’t-her-fault shake of the head.
Finn had actually seen him try to speak to Willa a couple of times today. Once over lunch and again when they’d got back from the barns, but Willa had come up with excuses both times. The fact she was sitting near them was a good sign, though.
‘Will we be doing any scything?’ Jeff asked.
Orla’s near permanently cheerful smile faltered.
Before she could answer, Fenella laughed. ‘That’s Poldark, you dill!’ She turned to Trevor, her fake spouse, and said, ‘No offence, mo luaidh, but if Poldark walked right now? I’d dump you like a hot potato.’
‘Eh, well, lassie.’ Trevor thrust his chest out and gave it a thump with his fist. ‘You havenae seen me throw a caber aboot, have ya?’
He jumped up and on to the stump he’d been sitting on, wobbled, then fell off, knocking Fenella off her stump in the process.
‘Right, then, matey.’ Fenella huffed her irritation as she reluctantly let Trevor pull her up. She swatted him away, batted some of the dust out of her skirt and scanned the group. ‘Who’s up for a husband swap?’
There was an unexpectedly weighty silence until ChiChi volunteered Alastair. Amidst his cries of protest she shouted, ‘But I’d like him back for Wednesday. Wednesday night, anyway.’
Fenella and Jules crowed a pair of raunchy ‘Ooooooo!’s.
Jennifer set her wicker basket on her lap, pulled out her ever-present knitting and innocently asked, ‘Why? What’s Wednesday?’
ChiChi threw Alastair a look.
‘New moon,’ Alastair said, a note of pride in his voice, as if he wasn’t often in a position to impart facts to the group. ‘There’s a meteor shower too.’
‘Orionids,’ said ChiChi with an uncharacteristic giggle. ‘I’ve not seen them before. There’s so much light pollution down south.’
Alastair gave her cheek a tender little thumb and knuckle pinch. ‘ChiChi says we’ll be able to see things extra clearly up here in the Highlands. She brought her telescope and everything.’
The two shared a look that suggested their day together, despite the oil spill, had been a good one.
‘Eh, Fenella! How ’bout I show you my telescope.’ Trevor began to swagger around the firepit, hips thrust forward, completely unfazed by the chorus of groans and Fenella’s screams of ‘Oh god, no! We kill venomous snakes where I come from, matey!’
After the laughter had died down, Fenella turned to ChiChi. ‘I’ll take you up on that husband swap, thanks, doll. Maybe you can knock some sense into this hunk o’ spunk’s brain. You’re alright with building stone walls, are you?’
‘What about you, Willa?’ Rosa asked with a knowing wink. ‘We saw that you went down to the barns with your Jamie. Was it like in the books?’
Finn bit back a smile. This should be interesting.
Her eyes shot to him with a panicked, what do I say?
He shrugged. How would he know?
Willa lifted her shoulders and gave a nonchalant, ‘Absolutely. Identical.’
Trevor grunted out a protest. ‘Shaggin’ in the barns on the first day, eh?’
Fenella glared at him. ‘If I’d had Finn as my husband? I would.’
‘I thought it was look don’t touch!’ Trevor scowled. He let his tin plate fall with a clatter on the washing up table. ‘Trust Finn Jamieson to make his own set of rules yet again.’
He felt the group’s eyes turn to him. Finn shook his head, irritated. Trevor McNulty had worn a chip on his shoulder ever since they’d met. Always picking and pushing and testing to see just how far he could push Finn until, one day – and it would happen – Finn threw the first of a long series of overdue punches.
‘I obey the word of law according to Orla,’ Finn said.
Orla, to his relief, didn’t contest the declaration.
Gabe jumped in. ‘Willa’s very much in the don’t-ask-don’t-tell camp of keeping confidences, aren’t you, bonita? A lot like Claire, you learnt many lessons about loyalty at the nunnery. Right?’
‘Yes,’ she said solemnly. ‘When you came to pick me up from the nunnery I said as much, didn’t I? What happens at the immersive Jacobean experience, stays at the immersive Jacobean experience. And that holds true for barns as well.’
The two shared a smile that, even from his spot outside the fire circle, warmed Finn’s heart. They’d make their peace.
The conversation moved on to everyone’s favourite episodes and Finn’s gaze, once again drifted to Willa. A huge yawn and then another consumed her.
He slid on to the stump beside her. ‘You should head off to your bed.’ Finn nodded towards the stairwell leading up the hayloft. ‘We’ve got another busy day in store tomorrow.’
She stared at him for a moment, then up at the stairs, her eyes glassing over in a way that suggested she was barely able to grasp that she would have to move all the way from here to there.
He knew he’d face ridicule for what his gut was telling him to do but fuck it. It was his first and only fake wedding night. Not to mention it would annoy Trevor, so . . .
He scooped her up in his arms and began to head towards the stairs.
Behind him there were catcalls and whistles from the lads and sighs and requests for the same from a few of the women, apart from Fenella who warned Trevor if he touched her, she’d slap him.
‘They seem to be getting on well,’ Finn said to Willa as she sleepily slid her arms round his neck, nestling into the nook between his shoulder and neck as if she’d done it countless times before.
When he reached the top of the stairs and got the door open, more wolf-whistles rang out. As he entered the hayloft, he was struck anew by what a good job Orla had done. It was pure rural chic versus the epically messy storage room it had been a week ago. She’d worked hard to put this lark together. And she already worked hard before that. Cleaning jobs down the village, anything Dougie needed, the kids, her dad and she still, somehow, made room for the Amateur Dramatic society. Which did beg the question: why was she so driven to stay at Balcraigie Castle Farm when selling the place meant she could put her feet up?
He shoved the thought aside. Thinking about it opened the door to too many other questions he’d long since decided weren’t worth seeking answers for.
‘Are you going to tell me a bedtime story?’ Willa asked when he slipped her under the quilts, clothes and all, after he’d helped her tug her boots off.
‘If you like.’
He sat down on a hay bale and looked at her.
She looked so . . . unguarded. Her features soft and vulnerable in their openness. She was trusting him to be with her in her private space. ‘What would you like your story to be about?’
She snuggled deeper under the covers, eyes closed, forehead crinkling a bit as she thought and then, through a yawn said, ‘You.’
He snorted. ‘Oh, I’m sure there’s something far better. A fairy tale, perhaps?’
‘No.’ She gave him a few sleepy blinks. ‘Though it could be a fairy tale about you.’
