Swept off Her Feet (32 page)

“I am not!” I started indignantly, then confessed, “Something orchestral.”

We’d reached the bottom of the steps.

This was probably the last moment we’d get on our own. A mad panic gripped me.
Tell him he’s making a mistake about Catriona!
yelled a strange voice in my head.

I pressed my lips together more firmly and felt my deep-red lipstick smear.

“Right,” he said, more to himself than to me. “Here we go. Ready?”

Gently I disengaged my hand from his arm, and he looked down at it.

“Much as I appreciate the compliment of being escorted into the party by the Great Prize Bachelor himself, your date’s probably in there already,” I said. “This is Catriona’s night. You’re her boyfriend.”

Robert held my gaze for a long second, and then said, “No, I’d like to take you in. You’re our guest. My guest. And I think it’s what my great-grandmother would want.”

He held the door open, and I took a deep breath and stepped in.

Everyone’s head turned as we
entered, and for a second, I got an intoxicating taste of what it must be like to be announced at a real stately gala.

Catriona and the Learmonts were there already, standing by the log fire with the Grahams. Janet looked fierce in a steel-gray dress topped with a long clan sash in green and yellow. It was fixed at her shoulder with an impressive Celtic knot brooch, and her hair had been blow-dried into a helmet.

Catriona was wearing a junior version of Janet’s ensemble: a long white dress and little gold kitten heels, with her hair in a fancy braided bun and a sash fixed on the opposite shoulder. Another ceremonial detail, I assumed. No idea what it meant.

“Evie!” she said, then peered at me. “Is that my dress? Goodness. Hello, darling!” she added as Robert greeted her and Janet with kisses.

From over Robert’s shoulder, I could see Janet giving me the dress-code once-over.

“Sweet,” she said, disengaging herself. “You’ll have to take your jacket off for dancing, of course. Those feathers could fly off and get in someone’s eye.”

“Or cause allergies,” added Catriona. “You can’t be too careful with animal by-products.”

“Evie, will you have a drink?” Ingrid appeared at my side and waved Mhairi over with the tray of glasses.

“Ingrid, you look stunning,” I said, and meant it. Sheila had adjusted Violet’s dress so it appeared made for her—a delicate 1930s evening gown in duck-egg blue, with a swooping bias cut and lots of tiny white crystal beads around the bodice like sea spray. It flattered Ingrid’s small frame and made her blue eyes sparkle.

She looked like the Lady of the House. The thirties were her time, from her neat figure to the light curl of her bobbed hair. It was like a jigsaw piece clicking into its setting.

“Oh, candlelight,” she said with a blush. “Here, have a glass of champagne.”

I hesitated. One glass of champagne, and I got quite imaginative; two, and I started to think it was all actually happening. I didn’t want to tip over that line tonight.

“Go on.” Ingrid rolled her eyes and angled her shoulder so Janet couldn’t see. “I haven’t shown you the seating plan for dinner. You might need a glass or two under your belt when you see where Janet’s put you.”

Champagne or not, my imagination and reality were well and truly blurred over dinner, and after the first course, I didn’t care. It was magical.

For a start, everyone around me was in the most formal evening dress, but looked easy and relaxed in it, even Duncan, who was wearing the most ludicrous sporran I’d ever seen. It was the size of a dinner plate and had tiny paws of some description
dangling off it. The food arrived on silver platters and porcelain Kettlesheer Limoges plates, carried by white-gloved waiters who might have been local school-leavers during the day, but now looked like spectral Victorians in their black jackets.

I glittered under the candlelight, aware of all eyes on my throat. Conversation bubbled along as our crystal glasses were filled with Fraser’s wine, a different one for each course. I’d always imagined myself charming and eloquent when I’d dreamed about dining in some Edwardian romance, but had known deep down that the reality would be tongue-tied panic about which knife to use. Yet tonight, next to Kenneth Graham and Dougie, I found it surprisingly easy. So easy that the time rushed by far too fast.

Too fast, because I wanted to savor each second but also because underneath the chatter was the steady drumbeat of nerves that in two hours, one hour, thirty minutes, I’d have to dance in front of all these people.

Fraser was seated opposite me, and he looked resplendent in the full Scottish rig-out. Alice, I now knew, was out of her tiny mind. Even Douglas and Kirstie had taken on an otherworldly splendor in their evening wear; Kirstie’s sash was held in place by something that looked suspiciously like a diamanté hair clip, but from across the table, it didn’t seem as if her plunging neckline was impeding the flow of dinner-table conversation with either of the men sitting next to her.

I couldn’t see Robert at all. He was right at the other end, and when the coffee came round and the dance cards were distributed on silver platters, I panicked that I wouldn’t reach him in time to bag a dance.

“Might I have the pleasure of Hamilton House?” asked
Fraser, his pencil poised above his dance card. The weeny pencil looked incongruous in his big hands.

“Yes, of course.” I was about to write his name in when a waitress appeared behind me with a tray.

“Sorry, we gave you the wrong card,” she said, putting a new card in front of me. “Could you give me that back?”

“Wrong . . . ?” I started. As she took my card from me, I saw the new one fall open. It already had a dance filled in:
The Eightsome Reel; Mr. Robert McAndrew.

My skin shivered at the gallantry. I looked up at Fraser. “Hamilton House. Yes, I’d be delighted.”

Douglas was equally chivalrous and offered me a dance, as did the charming vicar to my left, and my card was practically full up when Duncan banged his gong with unseemly relish.

“Ladies and gentlemen! If I may crave your indulgence for a moment? Lovely! As the time has now marched on to ten minutes to ten o’clock, it’s time for us to make our way to the ballroom for the night’s festivities to commence. If those taking part in the Reel of Luck would step to one side, Janet will be arranging us for our grand entrance!”

I glanced across the table, and saw Fraser waiting to catch my eye. He raised his eyebrows in a
Ready?
gesture, and when I nodded, he got to his feet and came round to ease my chair out so I could get up.

Oh, the manners. How I would miss the manners when I returned to normality.

The piper, Terry, had now appeared at the door, his bagpipes splayed over his shoulder like a giant tartan spider.

“Errrr we seyt?” he demanded in a very thick Scottish accent.

“Aye, we are, brave Scot!” replied Duncan with a swing of his sporran.

“I have no idea how historically accurate this is,” muttered Fraser, “but Duncan insists on it.”

Janet lined us up bossily. “Catriona and Robert, you’ll be leading us in as the heir and lady, then Ingrid and Duncan as hosts, and Lady Morag and Sir Hamish, if you’d be so kind, and . . .” She’d reached us. I could tell from the look on her face that it was taking all the self-control she possessed not to shove me out of the line and take my place herself.

“Evie and Fraser,” supplied Fraser helpfully.

“I know who you are, dear. Now, Evie, you’re absolutely sure?”

“I’ve been studying Catriona’s diagrams all night,” I said. “I am a red dot and Fraser is my red cross.”

She gave me a reproachful look. “Don’t try too hard. If in doubt, let the men move you about. And don’t fall over.”

“Wise words for us all there, Janet,” said Fraser.

She studied him for a minute, to check he wasn’t joking, then nodded to the piper, who replied with a blast of warm-up squalling from his pipes.

And then, before I could take in what was happening, he was walking slowly out of the dining room and we were following, very slowly and with ringing ears, as if we were at a wedding and a rock concert simultaneously.

“I may never hear again,” I murmured to Fraser as we stepped onto the first stair.

“What?” He leaned down so I could yell into his ear.

“I may never—Oh, never mind.”

I took a deep breath.
Help me out, Violet,
I thought.
Steer me, Ranald.

Ahead of us, Robert and Catriona made a straight-backed couple, taking the turn in the staircase before we did. I could see his eyes fixed straight ahead of him, her hand laid primly on his arm. They were already as stiffly paired as the spouses in the oils they were walking past.

Fraser kept his gaze dead ahead, but squeezed my hand as we reached the top of the stairs and the open doors of the ballroom.

The piper stopped piping and stepped back. From behind the other three couples I could see the paneled room crammed with people who’d dined elsewhere and arrived in taxis, eyes peering curiously past the door to the stairs. In silence—and in slow motion—we walked forward, and a space appeared on the dance floor like the Red Sea parting.

My heart started banging. Literally banging, like it wanted out.
Now.

Catriona guided us all into the right spots with a regal movement of her head; and then, when we were in a neat square, she turned and nodded to the band, who lifted their fiddles, accordions, guitars, whatever mode of aural torture they had to hand.

Ba-duuuuuuuu-dum!

The reel music kicked in, my hands were grabbed by Fraser and Sir Hamish, and we were doing the circle. No sooner had my brain registered that we’d started than the music urged us back, and we were going the other way.

And then Fraser’s strong arm was round my waist and he’d whisked me into the cartwheel, and out again. But he wasn’t doing as much nudging as I’d thought he’d need to; somehow my brain was flashing up the patterns from Catriona’s book. The music seemed to be helping me along, with fiddle flourishes
to indicate when to move into the next step. I stumbled into it, my foot slipping on the newly polished floor.

“And set twice, turn twice!” shouted Fraser, shimmying his knees at me.

“I know!” I said, holding out my arm to be turned.

His eyes followed me round as we turned, and they were laughing—not at me, but with me.

I smiled back. My nerves were still fluttering high up in my chest, but something else was building in me: an odd sense of relief that, so far, it was all going fine. More than fine. Almost . . . fun?

Catriona stepped gracefully into the middle, and we circled round her as she raised her arms and did some extra-Scottishy dancing she’d been saving for a special occasion. I could hear Dougie whooping in the background. She kept her eyes fixed on Robert throughout, and then began her set and turn to him as if this were her actual wedding reel.

A pinprick of envy stabbed me. I dragged my eyes away from them, and lost myself in Violet’s ballroom. It was different from the still room that Robert and I had danced in, with the glittering chandelier above us, the sparkling mirrors round the walls reflecting the masses of faces until there seemed to be thousands of people around us. It
smelled
of the past—polish, and old tailcoats, and perfume, and anticipation, just the same as it had been for her, the first time Violet came. I’d never meet Violet, and yet she could have been standing right there by the marble fireplace, watching me.

And then the circle was moving again, and Catriona was setting and turning to Fraser, his warm hand slipping out of mine so he could spin her round with that controled speed I wished I could master.

She was beautiful, I thought, as she moved elegantly into the figure eight. More than that, she fitted in a house like this. Catriona would make it easy for Robert. And wasn’t that the most important thing?

And then we were moving again. As the music carried on, I started to relax—after all, I wasn’t being asked to do anything so far, apart from watch the other women go into the middle, then form their loops with the men opposite. Ingrid followed Catriona; her steps were cautious but neat, her face a mask of concentration. Then Lady Morag went in, and her dowager image was thrown off as she launched into some wild birling that sent her ballgown billowing and the other dancers cheering round us. The noise seemed to lift us like a football match, and I was just thinking how marvelous it all was—being inside this circle—when I realized everyone’s eyes were on me, and Fraser’s hand was firmly directing me into the middle.

I was on.

I’d never felt more conspicuous
in my whole life than I did in the middle of that circle.

The fiddles and drums surged on, and the seven began turning, and I stood frozen to the spot like a dummy. I’d still have been standing there if I hadn’t spotted Sheila standing behind the set, frantically making stirring motions with her finger, one way and then the other.

Was that some kind of extra dance? I peered at her, and she rolled her eyes and spun round, much to the confusion of Kenneth standing next to her.