Chapter 25
‘R ing of Fire!’ Mo calls out and slaps down a pack of cards on the coffee table.
‘No, truth or dare!’ Riley whines.
‘Truth or dare? Are you twelve?’
‘Okay, okay, never have I ever.’ Jamie Riley grins. ‘I want to see who has drunk piss through a sock. My bets are on Allie.’ He shoots me a wink.
‘You’re literally the only greebo who would do something like that,’ Mo fires back with a cringe.
By the time night falls, Mo and Jamie have bickered over one thing or another at least four times, three other people have arrived including Fraser’s sister, and the piper is now sat less than two inches from me as the new arrivals have also crammed themselves onto the singular couch.
‘You regretting your choice to come yet?’ Fraser bends down close to whisper in my ear. Whisky stirs with his aftershave and the scent is intoxicating. It doesn’t help that I too am on my third rather strong drink of the night, and I know that as soon as I manage to pull myself out of this sofa, the drunkenness will hit me.
So far, I have done little but observe everyone around me. Giggled along as the Grenadiers argue, watch as Sophie talks the ear off Eilidh Bell in the corner, and savour the feeling of Fraser’s arm pressing its heat against mine throughout the night.
‘I’d say I’m rather content.’
‘Aren’t you used to balls and banquets and all of those fancy things? Surely this is horrendous compared to all of that.’
‘You’d be surprised how much, much worse the “posh” parties I’ve been to are.’ I chuckle. ‘Wealth very rarely equals class.’
‘Do you fancy heading outside?’ Fraser seems to take himself by surprise with his words. ‘I mean, I heard there was supposed to be a meteor shower or something tonight, and these two are driving me mad.’ He gestures to the bickering guards and I clamber to my feet to follow him out without a second thought.
Out on the streets of Inverness, the September winds are biting. ‘Stay there,’ Fraser says, noticing me shiver. He runs off into the darkened end of the car park, and I hear the door of a car open and close before he returns under the orange glow of the streetlight.
Handing me the jumper that I had woken up in what feels like months ago, I smile at the memory. Dragging my head through the wool, I savour the smell of hay and cologne. ‘Thank you,’ I breathe and Fraser reaches up, smooths down my hair and untucks a few strands that are snagged in the collar.
‘There’s a little river just down here where the lights aren’t so bright,’ the piper says, looking up at the stars, his whole face seeming to smile in the moonlight.
I trust him, blindly. I could follow him to the ends of the earth and it would be no more effort than falling asleep at night. Being with him, walking beside him, existing in his vicinity is like breathing: like my heart, my lungs, the very blood in my body is made for this exact purpose.
‘I should be getting déj à vu, but somehow everything I do with you feels like the first time,’ I say, thinking out loud, remembering the smoggy night in London when Atticus took me out to dance under the stars that were hidden from sight. That perhaps should have been the first sign thinking back.
‘So, you’ve left a house party full of bickering guardsmen to look at shooting stars with a man who wears a skirt for a living before?’ Fraser teases.
‘Something like that,’ I jest, and follow him deeper and deeper into the night, until the only light around us is that of the still, sleeping water of the river that glows silver in the moonlight.
A flat bridge crosses it, joining together two gardens of wildflowers shrouded in darkness. Fraser walks to the middle and then sits down on the mossy walkway, beckoning me over. Forgetting all of myself, all of my upbringing, I follow him, and sit down beside him on the cold dewy ground. With a smile only just visible in the soft shine of the moon, he lies down facing the stars.
‘You’re lying on the ground?’ I ask, a little of my snobbery seeping through. ‘Isn’t it dirty?’
‘Aye, course it is – that’s why it’s fun,’ Fraser replies, propping himself up on his elbows, his red hair already ornamented with little flakes of moss.
Lying down, I hardly notice Fraser move until my head hits something soft and I realise it is his bicep under my skull. Fraser Bell has his arm outstretched beneath me, both protecting me from the hard floor, and drawing me into an intimate embrace that has never warmed a woman so quickly.
Resting my hand instinctively on his chest, I snuggle deeper into his arm and shoulder, until his once-tense arm relaxes to snake around me and we lie, cuddled together in the middle of a footpath, watching for the stars to shoot across the sky.
‘There!’ he gasps, pointing into the abyss of the night. I miss the one he gestures to, too invested in the look on his face, too enamoured by his presence to care about the once-in-a-lifetime event.
‘What did you wish for?’ I ask in a whisper.
‘This …’ he says, taking my cheek in his hand and pressing his lips to mine. The kiss is only fleeting, and leaves my whole face tingling in the desire for more, and yet everything about it is perfect.
So contented, so at peace, I turn my face back to the sky, allowing the nightly breeze to cool the heat of my complexion. The meteor shower bathes the sky in a sea of shooting stars but for the first time in my life, my wish isn’t to find true love, or love like a fairy tale. My wish is for this moment, this night, to last just a little longer.
* * *
I don’t realise that I have fallen asleep until Fraser gently wakes me by stroking my hair from my face. ‘Am I that boring?’
‘No, no,’ I hum sleepily. ‘It’s just so peaceful.’
‘We should probably be heading back before someone starts to worry.’ Fraser’s words don’t match his expression, as though he fights with his own self to do what he knows is the right thing, though I know full well the two of us would rather stay here. ‘Plus, I can’t let you go catching a cold now, can I?’
That seems to spur him on and he clambers to his feet, offering me his hand to help me up.
‘Alice,’ he says as we walk hand in hand back towards Cammy’s flat. The piper stops to look at me, his wide, bright eyes filled with doubt. Watching him closely, I wait for him to continue. ‘Is this all a rebellion?’
His question takes me by surprise.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘It’s just you and I are from very, very different worlds. I have almost nothing to offer you except what I am in front of you right now. And I can’t help but feel like a lass like you could only want a guy like me to prove something to your parents.’
‘I can’t deny that the thought of making my mother positively choke in shock isn’t appealing, but no,’ I admit truthfully. ‘I never set out for any of this to happen; in fact, I’ve been trying everything I possibly can to repress how I feel and yet I am always drawn back to you.’
‘And how do you feel?’ His eyes are wide, searching across my face. Though everything in me is screaming to tell him what he wants to hear, I can’t allow myself. Not when my best friend is only feet away probably wondering where we’ve slipped off to and surmising that I have once again betrayed her, and I have.
‘I don’t know,’ I whisper, almost guiltily.
‘You don’t know?’ Fraser’s face cracks with the pain of rejection and his dimples flatline. ‘Now I never expected you to give up your family and run away with me if I asked, but I thought at least you might feel a fraction for me what I feel for you.’
Stumbling over my words, I can only bumble some syllables in reply. Fraser doesn’t say what it is he feels, but I know that whatever he may feel for me, I feel for him tenfold in return.
I love him. Like Darcy loves Elizabeth. Like Heathcliff loves Cathy. Like the sun loves the moon. Against all better judgement. Against the wishes and expectations of all those who don’t matter to me. Messily, violently, and yet as easily as breathing.
‘I stayed for you this summer, Alice,’ he says softly, sadly.
‘For me?’ I can only parrot his own words back to him.
‘I had heard all of the stories of the spoilt lady banished to Balmoral, wild and out of control. Yet when you arrived, I heard you call someone every morning when you thought the house was yet to rise and reach his answerphone each and every time. I saw you every day, even when you didn’t want to be seen, and I knew straight away that you weren’t the person they’d all been talking about, the person I could read about. I could see you were sad, so sad.’ He stops for a breath, and I can’t seem to catch mine. I stand stupefied, absorbing his words until they sit heavy in my stomach and I have no idea how to digest them.
‘A week after you arrived,’ he continues, a man on a mission to finally say what he has clearly been holding back for so long, ‘I was offered a post at Edinburgh Castle. I’d been recommended by the king and I was to start imminently. But I couldn’t bring myself to take it. I needed to get to know the real you. And most of all, I didn’t want to leave, knowing that I was the only one who was listening, for when you needed to cry, for when you needed to talk to someone who would find it an honour to hear your voice. You deserved to be heard. You deserved to be seen exactly as you are, and that’s how I wished to spend my summer. So, I delayed the start date, until next week.’
‘Fraser,’ I whisper, guilt clawing through me. He smiles, an urgent smile, but all I can see is that smart little child in the photo on his coffee table. That child who gave up his life to make sure everyone else around him was happy. The child who never got his dream because he took on responsibilities no young lad should have to shoulder.
‘Tell me now, tell me now that it was all worth it. Tell me that you … you love me just half as much as I love you, and I’ll delay it, indefinitely.’ His words, that word, seems to stun me back to some sense and instinctively my feet move, closer and closer to the house. My mind swirls. Both pleasure and pain overtake me until I positively tremble at the reality of it all.
‘Alice,’ he calls. ‘Alice, please.’
I love him. It’s obvious. But I can’t let the man I love give up his life for the sad little royal, to take care of her, only ever from a distance. Fraser Bell deserves someone happy who can make him equally so. A life with me is only filled with misery; my relationships are as cursed as my mother, father, and all the loveless marriages before them. Even so, he could never fit into my life. Who would allow it? No matter how I tried, he’d never be welcomed, and I couldn’t bring him into a life that would only break him as it has me.
So, I do the only thing this life has fully equipped me for: I lie. ‘The world isn’t wrong, Fraser; you are,’ I say, feigning strength though my voice warbles. ‘I am not the person you think I am, nor can I be the person you want me to be.’ Pain pinballs through me with every lie, and every crack that forms in his usually cheery disposition.
‘What do you mean?’ he breathes, leaning forward to take my hand, but falling short as I draw it away.
‘You have me all wrong.’ The words sting us both. ‘The only reason I gave you the time of day was to try and set you up with Sophie. I saw she liked you, and that was my way of entertaining myself – to see you both together and in love. Buchanan and Jimmy were just the subplot. It was you two that were my real target.’
‘Sophie?’ His brow furrows, and his tone grows more burning, more agitated.
‘I had intended you for Sophie. Never myself. How could we ever be together, Fraser? The piper and the lady. None of it could make sense.’
‘I don’t understand.’ He rubs his face roughly. ‘But tonight? The kisses? The ball?’ None of it makes sense; I know it too. The only thing that does make sense is how I feel for him, how I would move heaven and earth to make him happy. But I can only do that by first breaking both our hearts.
‘It was just a bit of fun, Fraser.’ I can almost hear my own heart crack, and his even louder still.
‘Who do you think you are?’ Fraser stares at me in disbelief and the sight of it makes me turn away to shield myself from its attack. ‘You think that you can play around with people’s lives as though we’re all just props in your doll’s house. Our lives are simply your entertainment.’
‘Fraser? Alice?’ The raised voices have caught the attention of Sophie and Eilidh who emerge from a dark corner of the apartment’s gardens, and Sophie’s brows are furrowed with concern. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Did you know, Sophie?’ Fraser’s anger rises in his words.
‘Know what?’
‘That we have just been the pawns in Lady Alice’s little game?’ Fraser can’t bear to look at me.
‘Fraz, calm down, just tell us what’s going on.’ His sister talks to him softly, and he relaxes a little as she touches his forearm gently.
‘Alice?’ Sophie turns to me. ‘What is he talking about?’
‘I knew you loved him, Sophie. I could see it. And I’m so sorry.’
‘Loved who?’ Her confusion only mounts.
‘Fraser,’ I say quietly. ‘I never meant to take him from you, or make him love me. All I wanted was for you to be happy.’
Sophie looks at Fraser and scoffs.
‘She has spent these last months trying to play Cupid, forcing us together. All the while, toying with the love of both of us.’ Fraser laughs bitterly, and Sophie’s face contorts with pain.
‘I don’t love Fraser, Alice.’ Her pain shifts to disappointment. ‘If you’d only spoken to me about it, you’d have known that.’ She shakes her head and disappears inside.
Eilidh stands beside her brother, urging him to follow Sophie.
‘You really had us all fooled, Alice.’ A lone tear streaks down his face and I resist the urge to brush it away. Fraser Bell turns from me without another word, follows his sister and my best friend inside and I am left alone in the garden, wrapped in his jumper, sobbing into his sleeves.