Chapter 7 #3
“Which is evidently long enough for you to embarrass us and put all of our futures at risk. Roderick wouldn’t even look at us as we left the dinner, and what do you think Charles is going to say when he hears that Arran MacLawry kissed you?”
Mary began feeling ill. Not because of what she’d done, but because they’d stopped her.
Because Charles Calder had clearly endeared himself to her parents more than she’d realized, in case of just such a fiasco.
Because Lord Glengask had said that Arran would be on his way back to Scotland by tomorrow night, no doubt with Deirdre Stewart on his heels.
She couldn’t even explain it. For goodness’ sake, she was one-and-twenty.
He was not Romeo, and she was most certainly not Juliet.
This wasn’t love at first sight. But there was something.
They’d begun something, touched something, she and Arran.
They’d said they would end it when the time came, but given the way she felt at this moment, she wasn’t certain how she would have parted from him.
“Go up to bed, Mary,” her father finally ordered, pausing his pacing.
“For the world at large I blame MacLawry. Privately, I am most disappointed in you. And some things are going to alter. This indulgence we’ve shown because of your grandfather’s fondness for you stops.
Clearly you cannot be trusted not to act in ways that weaken this family. ”
That sounded even more ominous. Protesting now after she’d already stated that she’d become friends with Arran would only make her father more furious. With a stiff nod she stood and walked to the office door. “Good night, Father. Mother.”
They didn’t answer. In her entire life she’d never seen them so angry.
Certainly she’d never given them cause to be disappointed or even annoyed with her before.
But this was her fault. She couldn’t say she was proud to be a part of clan Campbell, because she’d never truly felt challenged about it.
She was proud of her grandfather and how well respected he was, and she was proud to be his granddaughter.
For the most part her parents did as he requested, which made them seem almost like an extension of him.
Would the Campbell be as angry as they were?
Was he truly the one who’d pushed the alliance with the MacAllisters?
What would he say now that she’d ruined it?
Would he not wish to see her or write her letters or send her bits and baubles from the Highlands any longer?
Crawford waited for her upstairs and helped her change out of her fine violet evening gown and into her night rail.
The maid was clearly near to bursting with “I told you sos,” but Mary didn’t give her the opportunity to use them.
Of course she knew better. The risk had seemed worth it. It still did, actually.
She spent most of the night awake, half hoping that Arran would climb through her bedchamber window—not to ravish her or help her run away, but so she would have someone with whom she could discuss what had happened.
So they could attempt to make sense of events and figure out what they needed to do to fix things.
He didn’t appear, and then Crawford began throwing open curtains shortly before eight o’clock in the morning. “We need to hurry, my lady,” the maid said, pulling a rather plain green and brown muslin from the wardrobe.
“Why are we hurrying?” Mary asked, brushing the night’s restless knots out of her hair. “No one will be out and about for hours.”
“I don’t know, my lady. Your father the marquis said you were to come down to breakfast at once.”
So she would be spending the day being reminded of her ancestry and her duty and the history of the clan’s rivalry with the MacLawrys.
Or perhaps he’d managed to convince Roderick that the truce, more rickety or not, remained, and that the Campbells and MacAllisters still had an alliance.
She frowned. Roderick. Yes, he was likely waiting for her just downstairs.
After she’d kissed and chatted with Arran.
A life of dull and mild, with a hundred might-have-beens up in the attic where she could dwell on them endlessly.
Even with all that, though, she couldn’t regret meeting Arran.
Without him she would have missed a handful of the most interesting conversations of her life.
She would have missed the sensation that her feet weren’t quite touching the ground when he smiled at her.
She would have missed knowing him—and that would have been a tragedy even greater than the one currently opened at her feet.
“Oh, you have a letter,” Crawford exclaimed, making her jump. The maid produced a crisply folded missive from her pocket and handed it over. “I nearly forgot, with all the goings-on this morning.”
Mary frowned as she turned it over. “‘Lady Joan Crane,’” she read aloud, not recognizing the name. The address was a respectable one on Reeves’s Mews, so with a shrug she broke the wax seal and unfolded the note.
“Dear Lady Mary,” she read to herself. “Though we aren’t well acquainted, I would very much appreciate knowing that you are well. If for any reason you find your present circumstances untenable, please feel free to inform me.”
What the devil was this? She opened the last fold of the short note, and a small scrap of yellow and white muslin fell to the floor.
Heat and understanding jolted through her.
Swiftly she bent down to retrieve the scrap, and curled her fingers hard around it.
Arran had kept this, from that morning at the hat shop.
She hadn’t even realized. And he’d managed to find a way to contact her.
He was still thinking about her, still concerned about her—just as she was about him.
Almost immediately the chill of reality swept in to drive the warmth of those thoughts away.
Because able to contact her or not, he was still a MacLawry.
He was still leaving for Scotland by sunset, and she still had Roderick MacAllister awaiting her downstairs.
And so she would write him via this Lady Joan, and tell him that she was well, that she wished …
that she wished him well, and that this—whatever it might have become—was over.
Once Crawford finished pinning up her hair, Mary put the note and the scrap of muslin in the drawer of her writing desk and went downstairs to be lectured.
In the breakfast room doorway, though, she stopped dead. Her parents sat in their usual places, their expressions as grim and somber as she’d expected. But the reason she couldn’t catch her breath was seated in her usual spot at her father’s right elbow. And it wasn’t Lord Delaveer.
“Good morning, Mary,” Charles Calder said with a smile.
The fact that he was smiling when he should have been plotting revenge against the blackguard MacLawrys horrified her. Because she could only think of one thing that would make him smile this morning. The MacAllisters had fled the alliance, after all.
“Have a seat, Mary,” her father said flatly. “We have some things to discuss.”