Page 52 of One More Christmas at the Castle
‘Thank you, darling,’ he said drily. ‘Poor old Xan will be relieved, I’m sure, but I hope she isn’t going to try and dog my footsteps like she did his.’
‘Poor old Xan nothing!’ I exclaimed indignantly. ‘He’s only two years older than we are!’
Henry raised one eyebrow in an irritating way. ‘Oooh, touchy! Are we falling for Xan all over again, then?’
He ducked the kitchen glove I threw at him and went to lay the dining-room table, before he began lovingly polishing the helmets.
Of course, I hadn’t fallen for Xan all over again. It was just that, now I was getting to know him better, I reallylikedhim … in a purely friendly way.
When Xan came into the kitchen to feed Plum, though, that didn’t stop me going slightly pink. Henry is such an idiot!
I hoped Xan didn’t notice anything and think I was turning into a Lucy, but no, he was opening a tub of gourmet doggy dinner, while apologizing for the scene in the study.
‘When I explained things properly to Sabine and that you’dalready asked me if I was sure she wouldn’t mind your helping me, she said she’d overreacted.’
‘I only realized later how she must have felt. I’m sorry if I upset her,’ I said. ‘I’ll leave you to it, now. Pity, because I do enjoy creating order from chaos!’
‘No, it’s OK now. She says if you want to spend your spare time cleaning out cupboards and hefting stacks of dusty archaeological journals about, she has no objection.’
‘Really?’ I said, surprised. ‘Great! And I’m saving any more strong cardboard cartons that arrive because you’re going to need them.’
‘I brought a few small ones with me, for any papers I needed to take back, but I hadn’t quite grasped the scale of the problem.’
Plum had licked his bowl so vigorously it had skated across the kitchen floor and under the table, where I was now finely grating dark chocolate into a small bowl.
‘Sabine’s lying down and I’m going to walk over to Simon’s cottage with Plum, to deliver an invitation to dinner on Friday. I mentioned to Sabine at tea that you had met him. Do you want to come?’
‘I haven’t time. I’m about to make individual pots of chocolate mousse for tonight’s dessert and then start on dinner.’
‘Which is?’ he asked interestedly.
‘Steak and chips – one of the meals Mrs Powys said she missed. She was sure you would enjoy it, too, because her theory is that all men do.’
‘She’s right about this one, because I do. Thin French fries or thick ones?’
‘Which do you think she would prefer?’
‘I remember Mrs Hill making wavy ones with one of those crinkly cutters,’ he offered.
‘I think I’ve seen that chip cutter in one of the drawers. Thick, crinkly chips it is, then.’
‘I haven’t had home-made chips for years,’ he said.
‘Well, you’ll be getting them tonight. Properly cooked, too – my chips are fat and fluffy inside and golden and crispy on the outside.’
‘I like the way you have no false modesty about your cooking.’
‘If you do somethingreallywell, there isn’t any point in pretending otherwise, is there? I expect your biographies are very good and you don’t mind telling people that?’
‘I’m brilliant,’ he said modestly. ‘Though, actually, I don’t generally go about telling everyone so.’
He got off the end of the table.
‘And by the way, you looked a lot less forbidding with your hair down,’ he said with a grin, and went out with Plum.
I gazed at the swinging door.Forbidding?
I grated the rest of the dark chocolate so fiercely that it nearly included my fingertips.
