Chapter Three
LUCY HAD NOT wanted to attend the wedding breakfast, but her father had, for once, been adamant.
“Methven has invited us,” he said firmly. “The least that we can do is support him. This way we minimize the scandal of your brother’s appalling behavior and ensure that there is no more bad blood between our families.”
So that was that. Lucy sat through the banquet fidgeting as though her seat were covered in pine needles.
She had no appetite. The food and drink turned to ashes in her mouth.
She could barely swallow. She endured the gossip about Lachlan and the stares and the whispers with a bright and entirely artificial smile pinned on her face while inside, her stomach was curling with apprehension.
She was seated a long way down the table from Robert Methven, but she could feel him looking at her, feel the heat of his gaze and sense the way he was studying her.
Yet when she risked a glance in his direction, he was always looking the other way and paying her no attention at all.
It could only be her guilt that was making her feel so on edge.
The meal ended and the dancing began. By now the wedding guests were extremely merry because the wine had circulated lavishly. Dulcibella’s elopement with the wrong bridegroom had almost been forgotten.
“Damned fine celebration,” Lucy heard one inebriated peer slur to another. “Best wedding of the year.”
Lucy sat with her godmother and the other chaperones, awkward and alone on one of the rout chairs at the side of the great hall of Brodrie Castle.
Lucy hated the fact that at four and twenty she was still required to have a chaperone simply because she was not married.
It was ridiculous. She knew it was society’s rule, but nevertheless it made her feel as though she were still a child.
And since she had no intention of marrying, she could foresee the dismal prospect of being chaperoned until she was old enough to be a fully fledged spinster of thirty-five years at least.
She was desperate for this interminable party to end, but it seemed she was the only one who felt that way.
Everyone else was having a marvelous time.
She could see her sister Mairi twirling enthusiastically through the reel.
Mairi always danced. She was an extrovert by nature.
Some said she was a flifrt. No one said that of Lucy.
She was considered too serious, too well behaved, and the tragedy of her dead fiancé had added a touch of melancholy to her reputation.
Her sister Christina was also dancing. Christina was not a flirt.
She was firmly on the shelf, companion to their father, housekeeper and hostess, destined never to wed.
Yet despite that, she was dancing while Lucy sat alone with the other wallflowers.
It was a state of affairs that happened with increasing frequency over the past couple of years.
Lucy knew she had a reputation for being fastidious because she had rejected so many suitors.
The gentlemen had given up trying, swearing they could not live up to the memory of the late, sainted Lord MacGillivray.
If only they knew. If only they knew that no one could measure up because no other bridegroom would accept a marriage in name only.
Intimacy with a man was out of the question for Lucy. She was not going to make the same mistake as Alice. She had to protect herself. That was why Duncan MacGillivray had been her ideal; he had had absolutely no desire to bed her. He had an heir, he had a spare and he had no interest in sex.
Lucy’s gaze wandered back to the dance. Mairi was spinning down the set of a country dance, passing from hand to hand, slender, smiling, a bright dazzling figure.
Lucy felt a curious ache in her chest. Sometimes Mairi reminded her of Alice, radiant, charming, glowing with happiness.
Lucy’s twin had had an exasperating habit of hearing only what she wanted to hear, of ignoring trouble with a blithe indifference and of charming her way out of difficulties.
But in the end the trouble was so deep there was no way out.
Lucy shivered. The stone pillars and baronial grandness of the great hall dissolved into another time, another place, and Alice was clinging to her hands, her face wet with tears:
“Help me, Lucy! I’m so afraid....”
Lucy had wanted to help, but she had not known what to do. She had been sixteen years old, shocked, terrified, helpless. Alice had held her so tightly it had hurt, words pouring from her in a broken whisper:
“I love him so much... I would do anything for him...” At the end she had called out for the man she loved, but he had not been there for her. Instead it had been Lucy who had held Alice as she had slipped away, as she had whispered how she was sorry, how she wished she had confided in Lucy before.
“I never told because I was afraid I would be in trouble. Please don’t tell anyone, Lucy! Help me....”
By then it had been far, far too late to help Alice. Lucy had thought that they had had no secrets, but that was not true. On the terrible night that Alice had died, Lucy had found out just how much her twin had kept a secret from her and just how high was the price paid for love.
Lucy gave a violent shiver and the great hall came back into focus and the music was playing and the dancers still dancing and nothing had changed, but in her heart was the cold emptiness that always filled her when she remembered Alice.
Her godmother, Lady Kenton, was addressing her.
“We shall never get you a husband, Lucy, if no one even asks you to dance,” Lady Kenton said. “It is most frustrating.”
Unfortunately Lady Kenton deemed it her duty as Lucy’s godmother and the dearest friend of her late mother to find Lucy a man. Lucy had asked her not to bother, but Lady Kenton was keen, all the keener as the years slipped past.
“I shall speak to your father about your marriage,” her godmother was saying. “He has been most remiss in letting matters slide since Lord MacGillivray’s death. It is time we found you another suitor.”
Lucy took a deep breath. Her father was indulgent toward her and she was certain that he would never force her to wed against her will.
Seven years ago he had been so anxious for her to marry, straight from the schoolroom, as though in doing so she might wipe out the horrific memory of Alice’s fall from grace, her shame, her death.
Now, though, the duke had fallen into a scholastic melancholy and locked himself away most of the time with his books.
Lady Kenton straightened suddenly in her rout chair. She touched Lucy’s arm. “I do believe Lord Methven is going to ask you to dance.” She sounded excited. “How singular. He has not danced all evening.”
“Perhaps he felt it was inappropriate when his bride has run off,” Lucy said.
Her throat was suddenly dry and her heart felt as though it was about to leap into her throat as Methven’s tall figure cut through the crowd toward her.
There was something about his approach that definitely suggested unfinished business.
He did not want to dance. She was certain of it.
He wanted to question her about the love letters just as he had threatened to do.
A man superimposed himself between Lucy and Robert Methven, blocking her view.
“Cousin Lucy.”
A shiver of a completely different sort touched Lucy’s spine.
She had no desire at all to dance with Wilfred.
He was bowing in front of her with what he no doubt fondly hoped was London style, all frothing lace at his neck and cuffs, with diamonds on his fingers and in the folds of his cravat.
Lucy thought he looked like an overstuffed turkey.
He had evidently been drinking freely, for he smelled of brandy, and he had flakes of snuff dusting the lapels of his jacket.
Wilfred’s smile was pure vulpine greeting, showing uneven yellow teeth and with a very predatory gleam in his eye.
“Dearest coz.” He took her hand, brushing the back of it with his lips. “Did I tell you how divine you are looking today? Will you honor me with your hand in the strathspey?”
Lucy could think of little she would like less, but everyone was looking at her and Lady Kenton was making little encouraging shooing motions with her hands toward the dance floor. Besides, she could use Wilfred as a shield against Lord Methven. He was definitely the lesser of two evils.
After twenty minutes she was reconsidering her opinion.
Throughout the long, slow and stately dance, Wilfred kept up a dismaying flow of chatter that seemed to presume on a closer relationship between them than the one that existed.
Yes, they were distant cousins and had known each other since childhood, but there had never been anything remotely romantic in their relationship.
Now, however, Wilfred lost no opportunity to whisper in Lucy’s ear how divine she was looking—simply divine—over and over again until she could have screamed.
He squeezed her fingers meaningfully and allowed his hand to linger on her arm or in the small of her back in a most unpleasant proprietary manner.
She was at a loss to explain the extraordinary change in his behavior.
He had always been obsequious, but never before had he given the impression that there was some sort of understanding between them.
“Dearest coz,” he said when the dance had at last wound its way to the end, “I do hope we may spend so much more time in each other’s company from now on.”