Chapter Thirty-Five
“Let me see,” Caroline said. Alanna spun in place, showing off her pink and white muslin gown, trimmed with lace at the sleeves and hem.
Megan was still primping at the mirror, fussing with her hair.
“You look so pretty!” Sorcha chirped, watching her sisters, and pretending she didn’t care that she was too young to be allowed down to dinner in such esteemed company. “Sophie says you’re an earl’s daughter the same as we are, Miss Forrester. Should we curtsy when we see you?”
“Mama said we’re to call you Lady Caroline instead of Miss Forrester,” Alanna said.
“I’m still the same person,” Caroline said. She crossed to Megan, and took the comb to add a curl or two to her hair.
Megan’s reflection looked up at hers. “Mama has invited Brodie to supper. I think she might be able to see at last how very much I—” She swallowed, blushing. “Oh, I wish I had something truly stylish to wear, like Sophie and Lady Lottie.”
Caroline unfastened the necklace Sophie had insisted she wear. She put it around Megan’s neck instead. “There. That looks lovely”
Sorcha leaned in to examine the jeweled violet, and pouted. “I still think it’s quite unfair that I’m not allowed to come down to dinner. I dine with the family every other night.”
“Mama says we must strictly observe English rules tonight,” Alanna said. “And in England you’d be a child, still dining in the nursery.”
Sorcha stuck her tongue out at her sister. “I’ll still be there, watching from the gallery above the hall.”
“I’ll tell Muira to fetch you down and send you to bed,” Alanna retorted, her hands on her hips.
“Muira’s probably more likely to be up there beside her, watching too, muttering about ‘bloody Sassenachs,’ ” Megan said, then raised her hand to her lips and looked apologetically at Caroline. “Oh, I’m sorry, Miss—Lady—um . . .”
“It’s time to go downstairs, or we’ll risk being late,” Caroline said primly, and herded her charges toward the door.
She took a deep breath, and wished for a moment that she could stay with Sorcha.
Alanna slipped her hand into Caroline’s as they descended the stairs, and Caroline was glad of the comfort, though she supposed Alanna thought Caroline was comforting her.
She steeled herself to face her half brother’s anger and the sting of Charlotte’s scorn.
The gentlemen rose as the ladies entered the room. “There you are, Lady Caroline. We were just speaking of mounting a search since the rain has stopped at last, but you would know that since you are quite dry,” Viscount Speed said.
“How well you look, Caro,” William said, coming to clasp her hand and kiss her cheek.
He was almost a stranger, though they’d grown up together, had been friends once.
She’d dreamed of being his wife, though she couldn’t imagine marrying him now.
Or anyone. She avoided looking at Alec, and gave William a brilliant smile.
Her brother stood waiting for her to come to him, his hands clenched into fists, his color high.
She curtsied, feeling his blistering gaze boring into her.
“Well, well, here you are at last, and looking very well indeed.” He said it as if the fact of her good health annoyed him.
“We have a great deal to discuss, and even if your foolish little adventure has lowered your value as a wife, I have other plans for your future. We will speak immediately after dinner is finished.” He made it a command.
Caroline felt a wave of anger. Did he truly expect things would simply go back their last conversation, as if nothing had happened?
She raised her chin. “I’m afraid I will be putting Lady Sorcha to bed after dinner. Perhaps tomorrow, after the girls lessons conclude at eleven o’clock.”
She watched Somerson’s face change from red to purple with rage. His fist clenched, and for a moment she feared he intended to strike her. She felt Lottie’s eyes on her, and Alec’s, but she kept her eyes fixed on her half brother. He lowered his hand.
“Of all the nerve—” Charlotte began, but Lottie put a hand on her mother’s arm.
“Perhaps we should take our places at the table,” Lottie said. “Perhaps it’s the Highland air, but I for one am quite famished.”
“Lottie!” Charlotte turned her ire—and the vast bulk of her person—upon her daughter. “A lady never describes herself as famished!”
“Och, there’s a laugh—I saw Her Ladyship at tea, devouring all the tea cakes,” Angus said to Georgiana from their perch in the gallery, right behind young Sorcha, who pressed her face eagerly through the railing.
“I’ve known warriors who could not eat as much as she—but they weren’t as big, of course. ” He laughed at his own joke.
Georgiana was gazing at her granddaughter, pride clear in her eyes. “Caroline does look fetching tonight, doesn’t she? I don’t think Alec has even glanced at anyone else in the room since she arrived. And I rather liked the way she stood up to Somerson. That took courage.”
Alec felt himself bristle when Somerson had threatened Caroline. He would not allow him to harm her, guardian or not. She had faced him down, and as with most bullies, his bluster had collapsed at her show of strength.
He watched Caroline turn away, fix Mears with a doting look. She hadn’t even glanced at Alec.
Muira announced the meal and Alec took Sophie’s arm and led his fiancée to a place on his left, but Devorguilla patted the seat beside herself, farther down the table.
“Come and sit here, my dear girl, between myself and Brodie, so we can all get better acquainted.” He watched as Sophie took that seat instead, and offered Brodie a soft smile.
Brodie giggled. Everyone in the room looked askance at the hulking young man, who was staring at Sophie and blushing like a lass.
Megan eagerly moved to sit beside Brodie, but her mother shook her head.
“You must sit further down the table. Next to Viscount Speed, perhaps? Alanna, you sit next to Lord Mandeville.” Angus noted that Megan looked devastated.
Lord and Lady Somerson took their places, and the reverend Mr. Parfitt sat next to Viscount Mears and beckoned to Caroline, who took her place to the left of Alec’s seat at the head of the table.
He could smell her perfume, see the agitated pulse in her throat, hear the rustle of the taffeta gown as her breath caught in her throat.
Her color was high, and in the candlelight, she was lovelier than any other lady in the room.
Mr. Parfitt cleared his throat and intoned the grace, and Caroline kept her eyes downcast, as if the pattern on her plate was intensely fascinating.
Caroline refused to even look at Alec, since it was his fault that Somerson was here. When he moved his knee to nudge hers, she shifted her skirt out of reach, and ignored him. On her other side, William grinned as she bumped him. She moved her knees back toward Alec again.
Alec turned as Viscount Speed leaned forward. “I think tomorrow would be a grand day for hunting, Glenlorne. Mears, Somerson, are you ‘game’ to come shooting?” He chortled at his own poor joke. Alec forced a smile. He tried to imagine Caroline married to Speed, and could not.
“I have a taste for boar,” Charlotte enthused. “Do you have boar here?”
“Alas, no, my lady. They’ve been extinct for several centuries, I believe,” Alec replied. “I can offer grouse, or venison, perhaps, if the shooting is good. The loch is filled with fish, and the river teems with salmon.”
“I adore the way Muira makes grouse in whisky sauce,” Alanna chirped, and Mandeville sat up.
“Whisky sauce? What an ingenious use of the spirit,” he said.
“Indeed I think we simply must have that for dinner tomorrow, after the hunt,” Charlotte said eagerly.
“I think I will join the hunt as well,” Sophie said. “For the fresh air.”
“I’ll go too,” Brodie added at once, his eyes on Sophie.
“What time are we leaving?” Megan asked, her eyes hard on her straying beau.
“I will go if Caroline is going,” William said, giving her a soft smile, and Caroline smiled back. To Alec’s eyes, Mears looked near as besotted as Brodie, and Caroline had eyes for no one else. He felt a hard nudge of jealousy.
“If the girls are going,” she said. “And Lottie, of course.”
“Oh. Of course,” Mears said, blinking at his fiancée as if he’d forgotten her entirely.
Alec frowned. Was there something between William Mears and Caroline?
The viscount began to chatter about his mother, and someone named Sinjon, and Caroline’s eyes sparkled as she hung on every word, ignoring Alec entirely.
He nudged her knee again under the table, saw a tide of color flood her face, watched her fingers tighten on the stem of her wineglass.
She was aware of him, then, even if she pretended not to be. It brought out the devil in him.
As Muira cleared away the cock-a-leekie soup and served the second course, salmon, he took off his shoe.
As Hamish came to refill the wineglasses, he found the hem of her skirt and worked his foot through the froth of her petticoats to touch her ankle.
Her eyes widened, and her lips parted in surprise, but she kept her gaze fixed on William, laughing at his jokes, pretending Alec wasn’t there. He wouldn’t stand for that.
Unless she was very much mistaken, Alec’s stocking foot was caressing her ankle.
What was he playing at? It tickled, and Caroline tried to move her foot away, but she bumped into William and his brows shot upward, and he gave her a wicked smile.
He thought she was flirting with him? She moved her legs back again. Alec’s foot returned.
“And your mother, is she well?” Caroline asked William, trying to ignore the fact that Alec’s foot was climbing her calf, rubbing, teasing.
William’s knee pressed against hers on the other side, and she shifted, but that brought her closer to Alec. She shot him a sharp look, but he merely smiled at her and sipped his wine.