is it just His Lordship I’m cooking for? Can’t His Lordship make his own bed?’
‘Don’t be impertinent,’ Stanley retorted. ‘You’re obviously not suitable.’ And, with that, Angus heard the great doors starting to creak closed.
That should be the end of it, he told himself with a certain amount of relief. He’d agreed to advertise for a cook. He’d put the advertisement in the window of the general store and no one had replied until now. So be it. Once Stanley had got rid of her he could ring his half-brother and say regretfully, Sorry, Ben, I couldn’t find someone suitable and I can’t put you up for Christmas without staff. I’ll arrange to fly you and your family up to do a tour before the castle is sold, but that’s all I can do.
Easy. All he had to do was keep quiet now.
But... Can’t His Lordship make his own bed? What was it about that blunt question that had him stepping out of the snug, striding over the vast flagstones of the Great Hall, intercepting Stanley and stopping the vast doors from closing.
Seeing for himself who Stanley was talking to.
The girl on the far side of the doors looked cold. That was his first impression.
His second impression was that she was cute.
Very cute.
She was five feet three or five four at most. She wasn’t plump, but she wasn’t thin—just nicely curved, although she was doing a decent job of disguising those curves. She was wearing faded jeans, trainers, a thick grey sweater and a vast old army greatcoat without buttons. She wore a red beanie with a hole in it. A few strands of burnt-copper curls were sneaking through. Her lack of make-up, her clear green eyes and her wide, generous mouth which, at the moment, was making a fairly childlike grimace at Stanley, made him think she couldn’t possibly be twenty-eight.
Maybe Stanley was right to reject her out of hand. What sort of person applied for a job wearing what looked like charity rejects?
‘Are you backup?’ she queried bitterly as he swung the door wider. Whatever else she was, this woman wasn’t shy, and Stanley’s flat rejection had seemingly made her angry. ‘Are you here to help Lurch here tell me to get off the property fast? I’ve walked all the way from the village on your horrible pot-holed road. Of all the cold welcomes... You could at least look at my résumé.’
Lurch? The word caught him. Angus glanced at Stanley and thought the woman had a point—there were definite similarities between his father’s estate manager and the butler from the Addams Family.
‘It is only the one job,’ he said, and found himself sounding apologetic.
‘Chef and Housekeeper for this whole place?’ She stood back and gestured to the sweep of the vast castle. The original keep had been built at the start of the thirteenth century, but a mishmash of battlements, turrets and towers had been added ad hoc over the last eight hundred years. From where she was standing, she couldn’t possibly take it all in—the great grey edifice was practically a crag all by itself. ‘This place’d take me a week to dust,’ she said and then stood back a bit further. ‘Probably two. And I’m not all that skilled at dusting.’
‘I don’t want anything dusted,’ Angus told her.
‘I’m not serving my food on dust.’
‘Forgive me.’ He was starting to feel bemused. This woman looked a waif but she was a waif with attitude. ‘And forgive our cavalier treatment of you. But you don’t look like a cook to us.’
‘That’s because I’m a chef,’ she retorted. Her cheeks were flushed crimson and he thought it wasn’t just the cold. Stanley’s rejection was smarting.
‘Can you prove it?’
‘Of course.’ She hauled a couple of typed sheets from the pocket of her greatcoat, handed them over and waited while he unfolded and skimmed them.
He felt his brows hike as he read. This was impressive. Really impressive. But...
‘You’re asking us to believe you’re a chef from Australia—yet your résumé is typed on letterhead paper from the Craigenstone Library.’
‘That’s because Doris, the librarian, is a friend of my grandmother,’ she said patiently. ‘I’m here on holiday, visiting my Gran, and Gran doesn’t have a printer. For some weird reason, I failed to bring copies of my résumé with me.’
‘So why are you applying for a job?’
‘It seems I’m not,’ she said. ‘Lurch here has told me you’re not interested, so that’s it. Meanwhile, I’m freezing. You’ve made me stand in six inches of snow while you’ve checked out my résumé and I’ve had enough. Merry Christmas. Gran was right all along. Bah, humbug to you both.’
And she turned and stalked off.
Or she would have stalked off if she had sensible shoes with some sort of grip, but the canvas trainers she was wearing had no grip at all. The cobbles were icy under the thin layer of freshly fallen snow. She slipped and floundered, and she started falling backward.
She flailed—and Angus caught her before she hit the ground.
* * *
One minute she was stomping off in righteous indignation. The next she was being held in arms that were unbelievably strong, gazing up into a face that was...that was...
Like every fairy tale she’d ever read. This was the Lord of Castle Craigie. She could see why the old Earl had been able to coerce women to marry him, she thought, dazed. If Gran was right, if the acorn hadn’t fallen far from the tree, if this guy was like all the Earls before him...
Tall, dark and dangerous seemed an understatement. This guy was your quintessential brooding hero, over six feet tall, with lean, sculpted features, hard, chiselled bone structure, deep grey eyes, strong mouth and jet-black hair.
He was wearing a gorgeous soft tweed jacket. What was more, he was wearing a kilt! Oh, my...
But Gran had told her the current Earl was American. What was an American doing wearing a kilt?
According to Gran, he’d been an indulged but lonely child. Apart from some scandal with a dead fiancée, he seemed only interested in making money. He’d sounded aloof, alone, like his father before him.
She’d been prepared to dislike him on sight, but sight wasn’t being very helpful right now. None of his background stood out on his face. None of those things seemed important.
Oh, that kilt...
‘Are...are you really the Earl?’ He was cradling her as if she were a child, and for some reason it was the only thing she could think of to say. Are you really the Earl? How stupid was that?
‘Yes,’ he said and the edges of his wide mouth quirked into what was almost a smile. ‘But only for a few weeks.’
‘You’re American.’
‘Yes.’
‘So why are you wearing a kilt?’
What was
