Chapter 23
“You look very pretty, Miss Freya.” Annie, the lady’s maid who’d been assigned to assist her tonight, ran the brush through her hair in long, soothing strokes.
It was lovely, having someone else brush out her hair for her. She’d never had a lady’s maid, and it must be said that neither Cat nor Sorcha had Annie’s patience with the hairbrush. Cat hurried through the task, and Sorcha yanked with such force her eyes were usually watering by the end of it.
“Do you think so, Annie?” She gazed at her reflection, excitement swirling in her belly. She’d never been one to linger in front of her looking glass, but then she’d never had much occasion to, and it was such a pleasure to primp just a bit.
“Yes, Miss Freya.” Annie set the brush aside and gathered the heavy locks of Freya’s hair in her hands. “Such a lovely color! Shall we do a chignon for you? I daresay the other ladies will have fancier arrangements, but I think a simpler style will suit you best.”
“I’m entirely in your hands, Annie. I think a chignon would be lovely, if it’s not too much trouble for you.”
“It’s no trouble at all, Miss.” Annie twisted her hair into a thick coil and held it at the back of Freya’s neck, then studied the effect in the glass. “Yes, just like that, but I think we’ll leave a few long locks to trail over your shoulders. It would be a pity to pin up all those pretty curls.”
Freya smiled at Annie in the glass. “Since I usually just bundle it into an untidy knot, I think I’ll defer to your superior knowledge, Annie.”
She did wish to look her best tonight. Not because she hoped Callum would gaze at her as he’d done at the folly this afternoon, with that soft expression in his gray eyes. Her face flushed bright pink at the memory of that tender look, and she pressed her hands to her cheeks.
Very well, then. Not only for that reason. Goodness, a blush did give a lady away, didn’t it? Such a thing as that had never occurred to her before, but then she’d never had any occasion to blush over a gentleman.
It was to be a special dinner tonight, in part to celebrate her first appearance at the table since her injury, and in part because Callum had some sort of announcement to make.
He’d been quite cagey about the nature of it, saying only that it would take place at the dinner, and that several dozen members of the clan had been invited to attend.
Then he’d warned her that these dinners involved a great deal of eating and drinking, and often ran late into the night, and made her promise she’d tell him if she grew fatigued.
It was nonsense, of course. What did fatigue matter? She’d stay from the start of the dinner to the end of it, no matter how fatigued she became. She didn’t want to miss a moment of it. It would give her a special memory to look back on, once she left Balnagown Castle.
But she wouldn’t think of that tonight. Tomorrow would come soon enough, and reality with it, but for tonight, she let herself feel the magic of this place, so she might hold it close to her heart once she’d gone.
“Nearly finished. Just a few more pins.” Annie fussed and twisted and fluffed and pinned, her expert hands a blur of motion in the glass, then stood back at last, a satisfied smile on her lips.
“There we are, Miss Freya. My, the color of that gown does flatter you, does it not? It brings out your eyes, and the fairness of your skin.”
Freya ran her fingers over the neckline of the dark green dinner gown Aila had brought her this afternoon. It was a simple garment, without the usual extravagant lace and ribbon trimmings, but the style suited her, and the color was divine.
“You don’t think it’s, ah, a touch too revealing?” The neckline was quite wide and exposed a good bit of her chest and shoulders, and the bodice fitted so tightly to her curves that if she ventured even a spoonful too much pudding tonight, she ran the risk of bursting her stays.
“Goodness, no, Miss Freya! That’s the fashion now, you know, and you do it credit.” Annie leaned closer, dropping her voice. “If I had your skin, I’d wear necklines down to my ankles.”
At that, Freya’s cheeks went positively scarlet, and Annie let out a merry laugh. “Hush, Annie, you wicked thing.”
“I only wish we had some jewelry for you.” Annie frowned at their reflection. “A necklace, at least. How lovely you’d look, with a string of emeralds around your neck!”
Emeralds? My, this was to be a grand affair, wasn’t it? “Do you suppose a ribbon will do?” She rummaged around on the dressing table until she found the ribbons Aila had brought and held up a dark green velvet one that matched the color of the gown.
“I’d prefer to drape you in emeralds, but we can make do with a ribbon, I suppose.” Annie smoothed the velvet, then tied the ribbon around Freya’s neck and fastened it with a pin with a tiny pearl on the end of it. “There! I do believe you’re ready.”
Freya stared at her reflection in the glass, and hardly recognized herself.
She was the same Freya she’d always been, with the same MacLeod red hair and green eyes, yet not the same Freya, at once. The upraised angle of her chin, and the proud set of her shoulders was different, as if …
As if the lady gazing back at her was the lady she might have been, if her mother and father had lived, and there’d never been a treasure, and the smugglers had never come to Castle Cairncross, and the villagers hadn’t turned their backs on them.
The Freya she might have been, if things had been different.
If she could take it all back, everything that had happened, would she? If her father hadn’t died, and there’d been no treasure, and no smugglers or fire, and no enraged villagers, then …
Cat would never have left Dunvegan, and Sorcha would be safe now.
But there never would have been Callum, either.
She would have gone her entire life without knowing him. She wouldn’t miss him then, would she? You couldn’t miss a thing you never had.
Yet somehow she would have felt the loss of him, still.
He would have been there, tucked into the deepest recesses of her heart.
She would have carried the shadow of him in her every thought, her every word, her every step.
A man she’d never known, yet still longed for with everything she had, and everything she was.
How could she wish for that?
God help her, she wouldn’t change it. Not if it meant renouncing him.
Her gaze met Annie’s in the looking glass. “You’ve transformed me, Annie.”
Annie smiled, shaking her head. “Not at all, Miss Freya. You look just like yourself.”
“Good evening, Miss MacLeod. You look exceptionally well tonight.” Gordon Corbett, who happened to be standing near the bottom of the staircase when she came down, offered her a courtly bow. “I think we can safely say you’re fully recovered.”
“Thank you, Mr. Corbett. I do feel well. And you look quite gallant this evening.”
“Do I, indeed? Well, I daresay I won’t be, by the end of the night. If I remember correctly, I was obliged to crawl to my bed on my hands and knees the last time we had one of these dinners. Although I daresay I don’t remember it correctly. To be truthful, it’s all a bit of a blur.”
She hesitated when he offered her his arm, but she glanced around the entryway, and didn’t see a dark head towering over the rest of the company.
Callum must not have come down yet.
So, she accepted Gordon’s arm, and let him lead her into the drawing room, where the rest of the party was assembled, waiting for the bell to announce dinner. “My goodness! So many people.”
“Yes, I believe Mrs. Ross said we’re to seat thirty-six at the table tonight. I hear the laird had two dozen bottles of wine brought up from the cellars, and that’s before we even get to the whisky.”
Two dozen bottles of wine, for thirty-six people? “Dear God, there’ll be no one left standing upright.”
“One can hope, Miss MacLeod, one can hope. You’ve a great deal of merrymaking awaiting you tonight.” Mr. Corbett waggled his brows. “I do hope you’re up to it.”
“I suppose we’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?”
“Not soon enough for me. We were meant to sit down at seven, but I don’t see … ah, there’s the laird now, just coming down the stairs.”
Freya jerked her head to the open door of the drawing room, flushing when Mr. Corbett raised a brow at her. She’d just given herself away, hadn’t she? But it was difficult to regret it when she got her first look at Callum.
Her breath caught. He was … goodness, had there ever been a more handsome man than he?
He was wearing a kilt and a matching waistcoat in Clan Ross’s red and green tartan, with the traditional garter and hose and a white linen shirt and neck-cloth, but in place of the usual tartan coat he wore one in fitted black wool.
She mustn’t stare. Someone would be sure to notice her gaping.
With an effort she wrenched her gaze away from him, but it was no use. It was drawn back to him almost instantly. Only a few hours earlier his smiling lips had been on hers, and his hands … heat swept through her, and dash it, there it was, that confounded blush that gave away her every secret.
She wouldn’t think of his hands just now. It wouldn’t do for her to burst into flames right here in the middle of the castle’s drawing room.
“Miss Niven looks very well tonight, doesn’t she?”
Miss Niven? Yes, she was there too, standing next to Callum, her lips curved in a brilliant smile at something he’d said.
She wasn’t dressed in traditional Highland attire, but instead wore a deep red silk gown in the latest London fashion.
Her sleek dark hair was gathered into a chignon set off by half a dozen sparkling ruby pins, and she wore a matching ruby necklace around her slender throat.
“She’s very beautiful.” For some reason, her throat caught on those words. There was no reason it should have done, but something about seeing the two of them standing there together was—