Tidings of Great Boys (20 page)

And now here we were, completely alone. Who knew what might happen?

“This person who sent the clip away,” he said. “She was a friend, you said?”

“Not anymore,” I replied with a sigh. A rock turned under my foot, and I grabbed his arm for balance. He waited until I was
upright again, and we walked on. “I think I’ve grown past her, if you want the truth.”

“Are you okay with that?”

“I suppose I’ll have to be. I’ve known her all my life. We have a history I can’t just erase.”

“I don’t think anyone expects you to. But people grow. They change. It’s normal to leave some things behind and reach out
for other things.”

Something in his voice made me glance up at him. “Is that what you’re doing? Leaving things behind?”

“Maybe.”

Urgh. Just like a guy. All wisdom and maturity about your problems, but ask him about his and he shuts up like an oyster.

“It must be difficult to leave your mum and your family and simply not see them.”

“Are you always this blunt?”

I could feel the cold on my cheeks as I smiled. “Yes. Get used to it.”

“Is that an aristocrat thing?”

“No, you eejit. It’s a friend thing. We agreed, remember?”

“That’s right, we did. If you have to know, I don’t go home because there isn’t a home to go to. My Christmas present from
my sister was a telephone call to say my mother is in detox. Jane is busy with her family and is in denial about said mother.
My dad died when I was young. He was a city worker and was electrocuted working on the wiring at the council building.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, utterly inadequate.

“It was a long time ago. So can you blame me for wanting to stay here? Gabe treats me like an equal, even though I’m not,
and your parents have been enormously kind. And I know Lissa quite well, so I feel like I do have friends here. And then there’s
you.”

“Me?”

I barely stopped myself from clutching my forehead in despair.
Idiot! Is that all you can say? Why can you trade witty remarks with princes at ambassadorial balls and society parties, and
you can’t manage more than monosyllables with a guy who’s taking the trouble to really talk?

“Yes, you. Friends, right?”

“Yes,” I managed.

Who wanted to be friends? Well, I did, but I wanted so much more than that.

Maybe this was the point at which a grab and kiss would be totally appropriate. His hands were full pushing the motorbike.
He’d be defenseless. Hmm.

“What do you want, Lindsay?”

Of all the monosyllables in the world, there was only one that mattered at this moment, in this place.

“You,” I said.

T
HE BIKE’S TIRES crunched to a stop in the snow, but I couldn’t see a thing outside the splash of light from the torch. Only
hear. Alasdair took a breath. Then another.

Oh, help. He wasn’t going to answer. Or worse, he was thinking up a “let her down easy” reply. I swung the light up to illuminate
his face.

“Ow! Put that down.”

“Sorry.”

Was that all he had to say?
Put that down?
What was I, a golden retriever? Could I just fall into the dark now and never come out?

“No, it’s me who’s sorry. I didn’t mean to shout. Look, let’s push on.”

After dredging up every ounce of courage I had to say that one word, no way was I letting it go to waste. I might never get
this chance again, so I couldn’t let the moment slip past to lose itself in the dark. I fell into step beside him.

“I meant it, you know.”

“I know you did.”

At least he had the grace not to play dumb. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

The bike crunched to a stop a second time and we faced each other over the seat. “What do you want me to say, Lindsay? You’re
seventeen. I’m twenty-one. You’re an earl’s daughter. I’m the son of an electrician and a boozer. You live in a castle and
everything I own would fit in a box.”

“So?”

He snorted and jerked the bike into motion again. “So you figure it out.”

“What does all that matter, if we like each other?”

“Oh, I like you just fine. Certainly too much for your dad, who would take me out into the orchard and shoot me if I laid
a finger on you.”

“He would not. I’ve been kissed by men lots older than you.”

A thirty-seven-year-old duke, to be exact. Married, too. But he’d been drunk and I had it on good authority that he still
had a scar on his instep where my Louboutin heel had pierced both trouser cuff and sock.

“Yeah, well, they probably weren’t his guests, and here under the wing of someone he calls a friend.”

We broke out of the forest, and the lights of Strathcairn glowed in bright squares above the trampled snow of the lawn. I
didn’t have much time.

“Alasdair, it doesn’t matter to me what anyone thinks. There is something going on here with you and me, and I want to give
it a chance.”

“What people think matters to me. I can’t afford for it to not matter.”

“But that’s—”

“It would never work.” At least he sounded miserable about it. “We live in different worlds. You’re going to go off and marry
a prince or something, and I’m going to be a doctor and deliver babies in Caberton. Never the twain shall meet, so we may
as well acknowledge it now and avoid all the drama, shall we?”

“But that’s exactly what—”

He fired up the motorbike and its back end slewed as he hopped on and gunned it up the slope. I stepped in a bank of slush
to get out of range of the spewing snow, and the cold shocked me out of my dismay.

I’d show him. So he thought we lived worlds apart, did he? He’d find out soon enough that our worlds could collide in the
very best way—that our dreams were more similar than he could imagine with the stunted view he seemed to have of me.

When I convinced Dad to let me change my program at university, and when I got him to agree with the hotel plan, Alasdair
would see. But that was way out in the future.

For right now, I knew he liked me. I knew he wanted more than friendship, even though he wasn’t allowing himself to admit
it. That was a place to start.

Carly met me in the entrance hall in a rush of relief. “Mac! We were so worried. Where were you?”

“I went to the village.”

“Shani and Gillian were so mad and I was just frantic. I thought something would happen to you before they got a chance to
forgive you and—”

“What?” I tried to dam the torrent of breathless words. “Forgive me?”

“Yes, ’cuz they’re really upset and somebody from London already called about it, which made your dad upset too, and now there’s—”

“Wait, Carly. Slow down. You mean a reporter called here about the video?”

“
Si, es verdad
.”

She must really be upset. It took me a second to translate, and in that second my father stepped out of the sitting room.
“Lindsay, may I have a word?”

With Carly blocking his view of my face, I crunched my eyes shut. Argh! I did not need this now. “Dad, it’s not a very good
time.”

“You’ll have to make it a good time, then. In the library, please.”

Crapcrapcrap
.

The last time I’d been summoned to the library, which was his formal study and not just the place in the kitchen corridor
where he paid the estate bills, it had been over going to America for more than just the single term that St. Cecelia’s deemed
sufficient to broaden one’s horizons. But I had plenty of other memories, most of them involving the wooden spoon that probably
still lived in the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk.

“Sit.” He waved me into the cracked leather chair on one side of his desk, and he sank into the one behind it that was dented
in the shape of his body. Or maybe it was his father’s body—or his granddad’s. The chair was so ancient, it was hard to tell.
The dogs followed me in and lay on either side of him.

“Dad, this is all a mistake.”

“Which ‘this’ would that be?”

“Um. How many are there?”

“Let’s start with the most pressing. I’d like to know why I got a phone call from a reporter from the
London Daily Mail
while you were out. And why our Shani is locked in her room in tears. And why you were not about the place to explain any
of these things.”

“Dad, I swear, it was all a huge mistake.”

“Yes, so you said. Things that reduce one’s friends to tears usually are.”

“I took a lot of video with the camera you gave me, and I made some clips. Sent them to people.” I swallowed. “I switched
the clips by mistake and sent the wrong one to Carrie. She sent it to Anna Grange as a joke, and the band made a video of
it.”

“According to
London Calling
, YouTube is also involved.”

“I know.” The clip had bubbled to the top at YouTube, which meant we were not just talking about a single celebumentary in
the UK that would be forgotten with tomorrow’s scandal. We were talking about visibility to the whole planet. And that meant
California. And Yasir.

“Go on.”

I dragged my horrified thoughts back to the immediate problem. “That’s it. That’s all there is. I was stupid and not paying
attention, and the clip went to the wrong person.”

“That still doesn’t explain how I came to be harboring a fugitive princess. Nor does it explain why I wasn’t told about it.”

My hair, wet with snow and perspiration, slapped my cheeks as I shook my head. What a wreck I must look. No wonder Alasdair
didn’t want to kiss me.

“She isn’t a princess. It’s all a misunderstanding. She was talking about being a Christian. The royal house of God and all
that.”

He blinked at me like an owl over the scratched and ancient surface of his desk, and reached down to pat one of the dogs’
heads, as if for comfort. “Shani became a
Christian
four weeks ago? That’s what this is about?”

I nodded, relieved that he got it. “It’s like an in-joke with them. But taken out of context, misunderstood the way the band
misunderstood… well, you can see what’s happened.”

He was silent for a moment before his focus sharpened on me. “Carrie sent the clip out, you said? Is that where you went?”

I nodded. “I tried to talk to her, but the upshot is, our friendship is over. She’s in this jealous fog that won’t let her
see what she’s done. The girl I used to know is…” My voice trailed away. Gone? Outgrown? So self-centered she wasn’t sorry?
All of the above?

“I’m sorry for that.”

I shrugged. “So am I.”

“So now what, Lindsay? How are you going to make this right?”

“Me?”

“You began it.”

“Dad, it was a simple mistake!”

“Aye. We all make mistakes, simple or complicated. But we do what we can to put them right.”

“Like you did with David Nelson?” Now I was the cat, lashing out with claws bared when I was cornered.

He flinched, as though I’d put a fist right into his solar plexus. “There was nothing I could do about that poor young man.
He’s been diagnosed a sociopath, you know. Incapable of forming relationships, even if I’d wanted one after what he did to
you.”

“That should come in handy in jail.”