Читать книгу The Peacock - Isabel Bogdan - Страница 10

Subsequently, Lady Fiona McIntosh was doing overtime too. She could have done without Aileen breaking her arm right now – various bits and pieces still needed to be done in the west wing, and Aileen was simply more practiced at that kind of thing.

Frustratingly enough, Aileen’s arm was put in an impressive plaster, and she was sent straight back home, where she couldn’t even open the front door, because to do so you had to hold and turn the key with one hand and turn the handle with the other. Lady Fiona decided on the spot that Aileen should come and stay with her for now. Without the use of her right arm, she was in rather a fix after all. So instead of Aileen looking after the west wing and Fiona McIntosh developing a concept for a new wind farm, Fiona was instead looking after Aileen, the west wing and her own household, and developing the wind farm concept on top of that. Really her work should have required her complete attention. She normally started getting ready for Christmas around now too – Lady Fiona was very organised when it came to that sort of thing – but this year it would have to wait. When the children came home before Christmas they’d just have to help. They’d never known it any other way, everyone always had to pitch in around here.

Lady Fiona had got one of the children’s old rooms ready for Aileen, and together they fetched some clothes and everything else Aileen needed from her cottage. Then they went into the west wing, and Aileen explained in detail what still needed to be done. She apologised at least a thousand times for breaking her arm and stressed how embarrassed she was that she was now giving the Lady instructions instead of the other way round. Lady Fiona countered that Aileen presumably hadn’t broken her arm on purpose, so it wasn’t her fault and she should stop apologising. It wasn’t as if Fiona hadn’t ever cleaned or done any other kind of work herself, so it really was all absolutely fine. And of course Aileen knew that Lady Fiona didn’t think such menial tasks beneath her, she used to cope without her after all. She had cleaned and rented out the cottages alongside her work, had managed the whole estate, and had brought up the children on top of that. Back then she’d only worked part-time though. The fact that she was long since back in full-time work as a senior engineer commanded Aileen’s total respect. Aileen might have been 25 years younger than the Lady, but in many ways she was considerably more conservative. She had assumed for a surprisingly long time that Lady Fiona’s main job was being a lady – but that was before she worked for her, when she only knew her in passing, the way you know a person who lives in the same glen.