Chapter 18
I have always dreamed of attending a ball, of being wooed on a dance floor that isn’t sticky with a spilt ‘Blue Lagoon’. The pleasure of savouring each fleeting touch of a hand, a ghostly caress across the small of your back, has been so lost in this age of anti-romance and I yearn for it. The thought of intimacy is always more indulgent when it is forbidden, when a chaste kiss is a scandal.
Is that why Fraser leading me by the hand to the floor feels so hedonistic: knowing that the best friend I have ever had is the one who truly deserves him, and yet my heart taps out a ceilidh jig, and my palms moisten in his hand with every desire for him to hold me closer.
Fraser Bell is silent. His chest rises and falls in his ghillie shirt but still he neither speaks nor so much as looks at me. The pleasure of seeing him again stirs with the pain that the feeling is unrequited and I find myself amidst the whole population of Balmoral, unable to pry my eyes from him.
‘Fraser …’ I begin in a whisper, hoping to force him to look at me, but the music fires up and we are swept away in the tide of ‘The Military Two-Step’. With one hand in his, we skip down the line side by side, and the piper guides each of my steps as I am spun, I skip, and my hands are imprisoned by his.
‘Talk to me, please,’ I beg in a low voice, hurt by his silence. ‘At least tell me what I’ve done.’ Before he can answer I am spun out again and forced to chasse beside him for a few beats until I can return to his full hold.
‘I have nothing to say to you, my lady,’ he says, before the song forces us to part again and I have to fight to keep my legs strong under me.
‘Must I order you to speak plainly, Pipe Major Bell?’ With each word, I have to force my confidence.
‘My lady may do as she wishes. I am at your service, ma’am.’ His expression is blank, and despite the fact I have just watched my boyfriend get engaged to another woman, it is Fraser’s coldness that is truly biting.
‘Don’t you dare act as if we aren’t f-friends.’ My voice wobbles, though still we dance. ‘Please.’
Before he can speak again, the music draws to its final cadence, and with a bow he leaves me stranded on the dance floor as he strides through the crowd and out of sight.
Overcome with frustration, with pain, I bustle through the party after him. Bursting through the doors, I walk quickly down the hallway, the wide expanse of his back still in my sights. Even the glimpse of Mrs Buchanan’s ghillie shoes behind the curtain with a rather muddied pair of boots doesn’t detain me as Fraser leaves the castle, and I hurry after him.
The rain lashes against my face as soon as I step over the threshold. Its cold kiss numbs me for a moment and I almost lose sight of the piper in the downpour.
‘Fraser Bell!’ I call after him, my desire to speak to him far outweighing my fear of being perceived by others. ‘Do I have to beg you to speak to me?’ My voice feels broken, I am soaked to the bone, and only when he finally ceases his retreat does the pain subside just a little.
‘Go back inside, Alice,’ he calls back to me.
‘Not until you tell me what I have done.’ Shivering, I remain stubborn.
Fraser stops in his tracks, finally, and with his back to me still, calls back, ‘Is that what all of this has been? Is that the only reason you wanted me? Get close to the stable boy, make him feel treasonous things, just so you can use his horse to piss off back home to a man who could never love you half as much as I—?’ He cuts himself off with a frustrated grunt and he rubs his face roughly.
‘No, Frase—’
Finally, he turns back, his red hair so dark as it drips down across his face, his white shirt clinging to his skin. ‘I wish you all of the happiness in the world, my lady. But know that a life with Atticus Beaumont isn’t the life you deserve.’
Turning to leave again, I call out, ‘Atticus Beaumont is engaged.’ Fraser stops in his tracks. ‘Atticus Beaumont proposed to another woman right in front of me and do you know what hurts the most? The fact that it hardly hurts me at all. All I could think to do was run back here, and yet your disdain, as much as I can’t blame you for it, somehow breaks my heart more than his betrayal ever could.’
Tearing his jacket from his back, he jogs back towards me and hooks it over my shoulders, pulling it tightly across my chest where his hands remain, clutched to the fabric. He is so close now that the rain runs down his nose and drips from the end to slide down my cheek like a tear. With him so close, I don’t feel the cold.
‘You shouldn’t be out here,’ he says softly.
‘You shouldn’t have run from me,’ I retaliate and he scoffs.
‘And you shouldn’t have run from me … from here. At least not without telling—’
Reaching up, I silence him by brushing the rain from his face. Without thinking of anything but him, his damp features, the warm throb of his body so close to mine, I reach up in my muddied ghillies and press my lips to his.
I am kissing Fraser Bell and though that fact should terrify me, nothing has ever come so naturally to me in my life. I don’t feel the weight of this tiara as he slides his hand into my hair. I hardly feel the rain hammering against us both as his arm slinks around my waist, drawing me desperately closer. His lips, his tongue, his wandering hands, soothe every single worry, silence every thought in my mind, until I feel more at home in his embrace than I ever have in my life. Being held by Fraser Bell is like slipping into a deep sleep, the weightlessness of floating through the ether and riding off into the sunset of a dreamworld.
When he pulls away, the both of us are breathless and our chests collide with each heaving inhalation. Fraser’s lashes are thick with rain as he rakes his eyes over my face as though trying to memorise every single freckle. I have never felt so seen, and yet, I don’t shy away from his gaze. His irises are so full of light, swimming with such affection that he doesn’t have to say a single word, for every one of his thoughts is projected loud and proud.
Holding me gently by the cheeks, all he can do is smile until he can hold my gaze no longer and is forced to turn away to shake his head. ‘What is it?’ I ask in a whisper.
‘Nothing,’ he replies, still shaking his head. ‘Just you.’ He plants a kiss on my forehead. His smile still persists, and it’s infectious.
‘Me?’ I chuckle.
‘You,’ is his only reply before he ensnares my lips in his once again.
Grasping the back of my head tenderly, Fraser pulls me closer and closer still until we are stumbling through the deluged flowerbeds. Desperate to have me even nearer, the piper taps me gently against the back of my thighs and I instinctively spring into his arms, wrapping my legs around his waist and submitting to him, his body, his lips, and the incessant rattling of my heart. He rests his wide hands over the curve of my backside, and my body is on fire with every gentle caress, every press of his fingertips. I am electric, I am alive, and I … am a horrible friend.
Sophie’s disappointed glare flashes through my mind and I pull away, as though struck by lightning. I have betrayed her – my one friend who spends her free time taking care of me, who bathed me when I could hardly raise my head, who dressed me when all I wanted to do was rot. What sort of friend would kiss the man she loves, the man I had sworn to set her up with? What is wrong with me? Why do I have to ruin everything?
‘Alice?’ Fraser says breathlessly, his words hardly audible over the lashing rain. I can’t look at him; I am too lost in my thoughts as I worm out of his grip and return my feet to the boggy ground. ‘Are you okay?’ He tries to reach for my face but I avoid his touch.
‘I’m sorry. I can’t— I shouldn’t be doing this.’ The words are painful to deliver and the way Fraser’s face freezes over with his professional coldness is the twisting of the knife.
Before he can say anything that will only break me further, I turn from him and flee back across the gardens. Thick mud splashes against the satin of my dress. My hair is plastered to my face, and all of my organs feel fit to explode.
I burst through the door of the kitchen, and a startled member of staff jumps at my swamped appearance. ‘Lady Alice? Are you okay?’ she asks meekly but I don’t stop to answer.
Leaving a muddied trail in my wake, I race through the castle until I reach my bedroom. I scrub the dirt from my hands, feeling just like Lady Macbeth crying ‘Out damned spot’. The guilt only seems to mount more relentlessly the more I scrub. Though my hands turn red with the effort, I still feel filthy.
Peeling myself out of my dress, I dump it into the bath, praying a soak will relieve it of its soiling. The taps hiss as t hey fill the tub to the very top, but the water doesn’t stay clear for long. Filth seeps from the fabric and the murky water just serves as a sick reminder that my friendship isn’t the only valuable thing I have ruined today. After lifting my tiara carefully from my head, I lay it down on the chest of drawers, praying that its outing in the downpour hasn’t caused any lasting damage.
Though the ceilidh still rages on loudly, I crawl, still muddied and wet, into bed, and hope that sleep will favour me and take me away from my mind for a few hours.
With Sunday morning arriving like a period in white trousers, so does the sweet, sweet alarm of screeching bagpipes as Pipe Major Bell uses his day off to stand beneath my window, rattling each of the bones in my body in a call that’s impossible to ignore. First, he haunted my dreams, invading the nightmares of Sophie and her anger with his lips and desire, and now he haunts me from my very first waking breath.
After shuffling from beneath my duvet, I make my way over to the window. His uniform is dishevelled, his hair peeks out from beneath his bonnet, and remnants of dirt linger on his shoes. The sight of him makes my legs weak and I have to cling to the curtains just to keep myself standing. As soon as his eyes meet mine, the mouthpiece falls from his lips, and his brows furrow in a pleading expression. Before he can speak, however, before I cave in his presence, I slam the window shut, draw the curtains and climb back into bed. His muffled piping is hesitant, reluctant, until it ceases just moments after beginning.
How can I face him?
Even worse, how can I ever face Sophie?
The summer is almost over. Soon the king and queen will be returning to London. Perhaps the only way I can stop hurting everyone around me is to go with them. Perhaps the only way to make everyone happy again is to leave the only place that has ever felt like home. Perhaps the only way I can make everyone happy is to give up my chances of finding my own joy. I’d sooner live in misery than allow myself to ruin anyone else’s lives.