Page 44 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm (Highland Cookery School #2)

Pavel let himself be talked through the kneading and the rolling and the waiting, and then the dividing and kneading again, before spreading with the rich poppyseed, nut and raisin filling and rolling and waiting again.

By the time the roll was baked it felt like part of Pavel – something that linked him back to his grandfather, who must have done all the same things in his kitchen at home and thought of the rest of his family miles away in Poland.

It was the same makowiec he’d eaten as a child but it was also brand new today.

He carried the cake home and placed it on the kitchen table in his mother’s part of the house. ‘Makowiec,’ he announced.

‘Oh my goodness. I had no idea.’

Pavel raised an eyebrow. ‘So Bella thought of this all on her own?’

‘No. But I didn’t suggest it.’

Pavel shook his head. ‘It’s fine. I’m glad you did.’

‘I really didn’t,’ his mother insisted.

‘I haven’t talked to anyone else about…’ But of course he had.

‘Maybe your young lady isn’t quite so bad?’

‘A parting gift,’ Pavel replied. He wasn’t going to get his hopes up again reading anything more into it than that.

‘You were right about taking little steps though. I’m going to go back over to the castle later and make sure everything’s finished off at the coach house.

And they’re going to need help getting the ballroom ready as well, with… with Jodie gone.’

His mum passed him a generous slice of the roll. ‘But for now, eat your cake, love.’

The coach house was close to being ready for paying guests. All Pavel really needed was to unveil his work, officially, to Adam and Bella. He headed over to the ballroom, to find Adam, Bella and Darcy already in there.

‘Hi. I came to see what still needed doing in here.’

Bella spun around, arms extended to encompass the whole room. ‘Everything.’

‘Not everything.’ Adam put his arm around her shoulders. ‘For all the mess, Jodie has done a pretty good job of sorting out the junk from the stuff to keep. And this pile is all stuff we can sell, which is great.’

Pavel was pretty sure that was the pile Jodie had been intending to put straight in a skip.

Darcy and Bella looked distinctly less positive. ‘Even once it’s cleared it needs repainting and everything is filthy,’ Darcy pointed out.

‘We can do that,’ Adam insisted. ‘We’ll get Flinty in to help. And we can all roll our sleeves up and… we’ll make it work.’

‘So you’re going ahead with Hogmanay?’ Pavel hadn’t been sure. With Jodie gone everyone would have understood if the laird and his fiancée had decided it was one battle too far.

Adam nodded.

Bella looked at her partner with trusting eyes. ‘You’re sure?’

‘I am. I mean, what choice do we have?’

‘None really,’ she confirmed. ‘We’ve got too many bookings to cancel now. Although more cancel every day.’

‘We don’t even have a band,’ Darcy pointed out.

‘Jodie had an idea for that,’ Pavel reminded them.

Adam winced. ‘We can’t do that though. Can we?’

Bella shrugged. ‘They stole them first.’ She looked at Pavel. ‘You’re still in?’

‘Sure.’

‘But we won’t know if it’s worked until the day.’ Darcy was anxious.

‘Then we’ll have Hugh on standby with his accordion.’

Pavel pulled a face. ‘Have you heard Hugh play the accordion?’

Bella’s shoulders slumped. ‘Yeah.’

‘Old Strachan plays bagpipes,’ Adam suggested.

‘Is he any good?’ Bella asked.

‘He might drown out Hugh’s accordion,’ was the most positive response Pavel could come up with.

‘Right. Well, I guess we can’t worry about what we can’t control. We need to focus on the things we can,’ Bella announced.

‘OK then. I need to check on the horses.’ Darcy smiled. ‘That’s not for Hogmanay. The horses don’t know any of this is going on. It’s kind of wonderful.’

‘And I’m going back to the kitchen to finalise the menu.’

‘Before you do that, there’s something I need to show you all.’ Pavel led all three of them across the courtyard, through the gateway and out to the coach house.

Bella sighed. ‘I hope you’re not going to rub our noses in another thing we can’t afford.’

‘Why don’t you take a look?’

Bella frowned, but stepped through the coach house door into the hallway. She stopped, dashed down the corridor, opened one door and then another and ran back out to them. ‘It’s all…’ She pointed at the coach house. ‘It’s all done up!’

‘What?’ Adam and Darcy made their own way inside, reappearing a few moments later.

‘How?’ Bella stared at her fiancé. ‘Did you…?’

Adam shook his head. ‘All Pav, I’m guessing.’

Bella threw her arms around Pavel’s middle. ‘Thank you!’

Pavel nodded. He was pleased she was happy. That was what he wanted – to make things right and make the people he cared about happy.

‘But no.’ Bella’s face fell. ‘We really can’t afford to pay you.’

‘I don’t expect you to. It’s a gift. Strach helped and I paid him out of the money I got for working at McKenzie.’

‘Yeah, but who paid you?’

Pavel shook his head. ‘It’s fine. I don’t have expensive tastes and it was only a few weeks’ work here and there.’

‘That’s so generous.’ Bella rubbed a hand under her eye. ‘Thank you so much.’ She turned to her fiancé. ‘This is great. We can start advertising residential schools or just B & B in the spring and summer. You could do gardening courses, or we could do pony trek weekends and…’

She clapped her hands together as she and Darcy headed back over to the kitchen full of new excitement and plans.

That left Pavel and Adam alone outside the courtyard. His mate looked over at him. ‘Thank you.’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘It’s not nothing.’ Adam took a deep breath in. ‘You remember you asked about me leaving?’

That felt like a lifetime ago. Pavel nodded.

‘Leaving wasn’t brave. You staying here was brave. I was terrified of living up to my dad’s legacy. Becoming the laird, all of that, but you’ve been here doing it the whole time.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Picking up where your granddad left off. Being the person Lowbridge needs. It’s a lot.’

‘I never thought about doing anything else.’ That wasn’t true any more. ‘Until…’

‘Jodie?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Wanna talk about it?’

‘No. Thank you.’

Adam nodded. ‘Want to get a beer later and not talk about it?’

‘Yeah. You can tell me how badly you need this Hogmanay thing to work out.’

Adam pulled his phone from his pocket, opened his email and handed it to Pavel. ‘The vultures are still circling.’

Pavel scanned the email on the screen.

From: John McKenzie

To: Adam Lowbridge

Hope things are going well with your preparations for the festive season

and especially for Hogmanay. I’m sure it’ll be lovely for some sections

of the community to have the option of a less elevated event to go along

to.

‘Bastard.’

Adam nodded.

It’s so impressive to see you trying to make a go of one of the

smaller estates. Don’t forget I’m here though. Ready to step in when it

gets too much.

Best

JM

‘When it gets too much?’

‘When we run out of money and have no choice,’ Adam clarified.

‘And when will that happen?’

‘If we don’t at least break even on Hogmanay then about January second.’

‘It’s not that bad?’

‘Maybe not quite, but there’s a lot of cost putting the thing on and every time we have a bump in ticket sales, half of them cancel a few days later.’ He gestured to the coach house. ‘This will help massively long-term, but if we don’t get some money in soon I’m not sure we have a long-term.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Right now, this baby won’t be here soon enough to stop me being the last Lowbridge at Lowbridge Castle.’