The hairy creature didn’t stir.
“Do you recall what happened last night at the state banquet?”
Konstantin screwed up his face. “The snowball fight,” he said finally. “Yes, wasn’t it brilliant?”
He remembered the palace windows blazing light as they ran about outside, exhausted, freezing, and soaking, but laughing their heads off.
“It was not brilliant,” said his father. “You hit the archbishop on the ear.”
“Well, he should have joined in.”
“You put snow down the neck of my financial adviser.”
Konstantin shrugged. “He’s an old stick.”
His father shook his head. “No. You behaved like a thug.”
“We were having fun!”
“And worse than that, you behaved like a bully to people older and weaker than yourself.”
“With a snowball.”
But the older man wasn’t stopping now. “This is after the ice races.”
“I accidentally tripped up—”
“The entire professional team.”
“They were in the way!”
The boy pouted out his lower lip and suddenly looked a lot younger than twenty-four. His father shook his head. “You know, if your mother were still with us, she wouldn’t have stood for this.”
The boy pouted more. “That’s not fair,” he said, but now his voice was quiet and sad.
“We were too soft on you . . . afterward,” the man went on. “I didn’t want to upset things . . . didn’t want to make you study too much or get a job or work hard. And look at you now. Twenty-four years old and in bed in the middle of a Tuesday.”
He shook his head sadly.
“I got it wrong. I got it so wrong.”
He turned round, his younger years at Sandhurst still apparent in his gait. Konstantin stared after him, stricken.
At the door, his father turned round one more time. “I’m tempted to disinherit you.”
“You wouldn’t! For a snowball? Don’t be silly, Pappa, you can’t mean that.”
“This is a big job. And you do nothing, you learn nothing, you work at nothing except drinking champagne and playing with that fat idle hound of yours.”
Konstantin frowned and covered Bjårk’s ears.
“Be as mean as you like to me, but don’t upset Bjårky.”
“It’s all a joke to you, isn’t it?” said the older man. “All a joke. And I am going to fix that.”
And he opened the heavy white door with its gilt handle and let it slam behind him.
KONSTANTIN SAT UP in bed, Bjårk snuffling underneath his hands. It would blow over, wouldn’t it? Surely. His father was always getting these ideas into his head, insisting he should go to college or into the military, or get a job, and nothing ever came of it in the end. The much-loved only child who’d come along late in life, whose mother had died when he was fourteen . . .
Mind you, there was no Johann. That was odd. He looked at the grandfather clock in the corner. No breakfast either. Normally he needed four strong cups of coffee and some excellent rye bread thickly spread with smør before he could even think about a steaming-hot bath and a read of the sports pages. His paper wasn’t even here. He frowned and reached over to ring the bell. But nobody came.
Chapter 3
Flora caught up with Fintan and they walked through the lobby of the Rock hotel. It had felt like it would take forever to get finished, but it was done: sound and warm and dry and very beautiful. And Christmassy, even though it was only November. The tree wouldn’t arrive for a few weeks, but the staff had already put up the great scalloped green hanging boughs tied up with tartan ribbon, their scent filling the air. There were bowls full of oranges studded with cinnamon cloves, the great log fire at the entrance was lit, and gentle music was playing in the background.
Originally a large mansion built for a wealthy local family, the Rock had been converted by the brash American developer Colton Rogers, with absolutely no expense spared. There was also no taste spared, in terms of what an American thought a Scottish hotel was supposed to look like, which meant tartan carpets, lots of open fires, muskets and giant stag heads on the walls, and a library full of old hardback books that had been bought from an aristocratic book dealer down Kirrinfief way, without Colton reading a single word of any of them.
It was a little kitsch, maybe, but Flora couldn’t help admitting to herself that she rather loved it. It was just so warm and cozy all the time, which in the winter on Mure meant a lot. And being done up for Christmas put it in its absolute prime.
There was underfloor heating, towel warmers filled with fluffy towels, and great deep tubs in the bathrooms, and the hot water never seemed to run out. The kitchen was pristine and full of the latest equipment, Flora noticed enviably, ready to churn out bread and pastries, high teas and fresh lobster, buttery scones and creamy Cullen skink, sumptuous cranachan. And behind the bar, forty-five different types of whisky waited tantalizingly, together with a menu of delicious local cocktails.
Flora and Fintan looked at each other. Flora was excited by all the possibilities; Fintan’s shoulders were slumped, his entire countenance a mask of misery and defeatism.
“It’s never going to pay its way in a billion years,” said Fintan bitterly. “We should just get rid of it.
“Colton didn’t leave me a fortune,” he went on anxiously. “He just left me this place. We’d tear through the money in five minutes.”
Colton had donated the bulk of his considerable fortune to medical research; he’d left the hotel and his house to Fintan, but Fintan couldn’t bear to live in the vast echoing house by himself, so Joel and Flora were renting it, while Fintan stayed back at the farmhouse.
“And I don’t know how to run a hotel! I don’t even know what VAT is!”
“It’s like a very complicated puzzle the government sets you for fun, but if you get it wrong you go to jail,” said Flora, but Fintan wasn’t listening.
“I already can’t get staff! And how am I going to tell them what to do? What if the people here want to leave because they hate me? What if nobody comes? How much would we have to charge? I should sell it. I should sell this whole place.”
Flora stood, warming her hands in front of the fire. There was a skeleton staff, all of whom seemed great. They just needed a chef and a bit of help in the kitchen. Fintan was panicking.
“But it’s all Colton’s,” said Flora softly. “It was his dream. It’s exactly how he wanted it.”
Flora eyed the huge antlered stag head above the fireplace and reflected that, for better or worse, it certainly was that.
He sighed. “It’s all that’s left of him. How could I sell that?”
His voice was anguished. Flora didn’t know what to say.
“Well, how would you feel if you did sell it?” she tried gently.
“We met for the first time on the lawn,” said Fintan bitterly. He now appeared to have completely changed his mind about selling it and was somehow blaming Flora for implying it. “We got married out there, or did you forget?”
Flora stayed silent. She understood Fintan’s bitterness and grief. She had just slightly hoped that he might get a bit more excited about moving forward, find energy in working on the new project, in making it as wonderful as Colton always hoped it would be.