I couldn’t resist going back to the dining room to see if the table felt different to me now that Max had confirmed it was worth squillions. I positively waltzed down the corridor, raising my eyebrows in conspiracy with the bearded Victorian McAndrews along the wall—who must have known too! And then not told anyone.
I’d barged into the dining room, lost in my own vision of Donaldina instructing the famous Mr. Chippendale about table settings, before I noticed that there was someone in there already: Ingrid.
“Oh, sorry,” I said, taking in the calculator, the papers, the coffee—not on a coaster!—and her bent head, propped in her hands. “Shall I … ?”
“No, don’t worry,” she said, sweeping up the papers. Not quickly enough for me to miss the red final-demand type on all of them. “This is the only table big enough for our accounts.” She grimaced. “Never marry a man who still adds up in pre-decimal currency, Evie.”
It was a surprise to realize that Ingrid—fragile, birdlike Ingrid—was the family accountant; but maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing, given Duncan’s preoccupation with home brew and history. Her stressed air obviously wasn’t just down to Janet Learmont’s social etiquette lessons.
“Are things … ?” I didn’t want to pry, but she was hardly hiding the evidence. “Bad?”
Ingrid started to demur, then nodded sadly. “Numbers this big actually stop meaning anything. Maybe selling to a developer isn’t such a bad option. I keep trying to tell Duncan, ‘Enjoy this ball, it could be the last one,’ but he just smiles and says something’ll turn up: ‘The family won’t let us down.’ ” She pulled a Grrr face, then looked exhausted. “It was all right for the family. Coal only cost a penny a ton in those days and you had all the maids you could manage queuing up in Rennick.”
Robert had seemed so furious at the prospect of the house swallowing up his parents and all their money; he didn’t seem so unreasonable now. But why wasn’t he worrying about this? He was better equipped to sort this out than Ingrid.
“I’m sure it will work out,” I said fervently, before I had time to think. “I’m very sure there’s something extremely valuable here.”
Ingrid looked up at me, a faint light in her eyes. “Are you … ?”
I nodded. “I can’t say more at this stage, but not a million miles away.”
“Oh!” She glanced down and put her fingertips on the table. “Oh.”
“Sorry, but …” I moved a council tax bill and put her coffee mug on top of it.
“Oops, yes. Oh!” said Ingrid, her expression brightening. “Speaking of the ball, I meant to come and find you—Robert’s organizing another practice for you down at the lodge. Just the youngsters, you’ll be pleased to hear—Fraser, and Dougie and Kirstie, and Catriona, of course.” She smiled and nodded. “She’ll be doing the teaching, I expect; she’s been reeling for years.”
“Robert arranged a practice—for me?” I felt the blush creeping up my face.
“Mmm. Last night, while you were getting your coat, Catriona suggested her sister, Laura, might step in to dance with Fraser, just for that first dance, and Robert wouldn’t hear of it. Wouldn’t even let her finish.”
She glanced over her shoulder, clearly expecting Janet to drop from the chandelier Mission: Impossible–style. “Between you and me, Janet’s trying to do some not-so-subtle matchmaking for Laura. She’d like her to settle down with a nice man like Fraser. Mums, eh?” she added, thinking my dazed expression was over the maternal interfering. “I expect yours is just as bad.”
“Worse,” I said. “She keeps sending me on speed dating. Sometimes she comes with me, to hurry them along.”
To check them out, more like. Mum didn’t trust me not to put my wishful-thinking goggles on, after a couple of rather unfortunate misunderstandings.
“Well, that’s what reeling’s all about!” said Ingrid. “Speed dating to music! I’m sure you’ll leave here with a good few numbers.”
I felt a sudden surge of positivity. That did it. Robert wanted me to dance with them, and I’d be saving Fraser from some Janet Learmont hostile takeover activity. If it meant defending Alice from any boyfriend poaching, I’d just have to force myself to dance with the most gentlemanly gentleman in Rennick, and indeed in the whole Border area.
And the sooner Max called me back with a buyer for that table, the sooner I could put poor Ingrid out of her financial misery, and make sure of next year’s ball.
*
The moon was so bright, reflecting off the snow-covered fields, that I barely needed Duncan’s torch, and the warm glow of expectation tickling my stomach put an extra spring in my step as I crunched through the pristine snow, wrapped up in all my thermal underwear, Ingrid’s biggest fleece, and two scarves.
Catriona was already in organizing mode when I arrived. She wasted no time in beginning the lesson once I’d got my coat off, removing the beer from Dougie’s hand before he’d even cracked open the can.
“Hamilton House is known as the flirty reel!” she announced, marshaling the five of us into position in the middle of Robert’s sitting room. “Boys on the left, girls on the right. Dougie, I want you to be on your best behavior, please.”
“I see you’ve cleared all breakable furniture out of your sitting room for Dougie’s benefit,” said Fraser. He was looking like a genial polar bear in a thick white sweater and jeans.
“No,” said Robert. “It always looks like this.”
“What? Unfurnished?”
“It’s called style, Fraser, we don’t all have to clutter up our houses with moldy old stuff,” said Catriona, before turning her attention to me. “Now, don’t take this the wrong way, Evie, but since you’re going to need all the help you can get—no offense—I’ve brought you those instructions I mentioned. As you can see, I’ve done one for all the reels. Different colors for different people, and so on.”
She passed me something that looked like a knitting pattern. I didn’t recognize anything from the previous night.
“Thanks,” I said. “Why’s it called the flirty reel?”
Kirstie leaped in while Catriona’s mouth was still open. “It’s supposed to have been invented by a right goer who wanted to flirt with her lover and dance with her husband all at the same time. Nothing changes, right?”
“That depends on your partner, missy,” said Douglas.
Catriona glared at her. “That’s one story. The other is that it’s about a tragic young widow searching for her missing husband.”
My ears pricked up, and I caught Robert glancing at me, amused.
“But I suppose you believe what suits you,” she went on. “Now, the first lady—that’s myself—starts, and she ignores her partner …”
She turned her head artfully away from Robert, then stepped toward Dougie with a low nod.
“… she sets to the second man …”
“The lover,” supplied Kirstie.
Dougie gave her a lascivious wink, then wobbled his knees, while Catriona skipped neatly from one foot to the other.
“… but then she turns the third man.”
“Presumably the gamekeeper,” said Robert.
Fraser held out his hands and twirled her round in a slow-motion spinning top. Needless to say, she made it look very easy and didn’t come anywhere near crashing.
“Then I come round to the top of the set, and meanwhile my partner—”
“Who also has an eye for the lassies,” added Kirstie, for my benefit.
“—has started and does the same thing with the ladies.”
Robert swung his shoulders at Kirstie, then reached out and grabbed my hands, gripping my thumbs, and quickly turned me around. As he did it, he glanced up at me from under his dark lashes. I knew he was acting up, but it still made my chest tighten.
“And then we join hands in a line and step to the side, two, three, four, and then to the other side, two, three, four …”
Catriona carried on talking in her schoolteacher voice as we forme
d one line of boy-girl-boy, then another line of girl-girl-girl, and then did the inevitable circling round.
“So it’s just a load of partner-swapping,” said Dougie. “Got that?”
“You dance with everyone and end up with the one you brought,” I said.
“I know, it’s just impossible at first,” said Catriona sympathetically.
But it wasn’t. The flirting story made it a picture in my brain, and the patterns made a shape that I could see, crossing, then turning, then crossing again, like crochet.
Oh, my God, I thought, stunned. This was what it felt like to learn steps.
“Evie? Are you all right? You looked confused,” said Fraser. “Do you want to go through it one more time?”
“No,” I said slowly. “I think I’ve got it.”
“Don’t worry, when we put the music on it’ll go wrong,” Catriona reassured me. “It always does.”
Quite incredibly, it didn’t. Even with the music, I still knew where I was supposed to be going, who I was supposed to be reaching out for. Maybe it was because the others were sweet enough to reach out for my hands every time; maybe Violet was discreetly nudging me into place; maybe it was because part of me was instinctively aiming for Robert.
It was fast, it was fun, and after the fifth time, I realized I wasn’t even thinking about where I was going next.
*
We reeled until I accidentally knocked over the one ornament in the whole sitting room, at which point Catriona firmly shunted us into the kitchen to eat pasta served in minimalist white bowls. They were obviously expensive, but seemed joyless compared with the delicate violet and thistle crests of Kettlesheer’s service.
Afterward, Fraser and I volunteered to load the state-of-the-art dishwasher, while the others lounged on the sofas, discussing some horsey hunt business. Catriona kept saying, “We shouldn’t laugh …” but that didn’t stop her from roaring with laughter about some girl called Tats McNee. (Tats could have been the horse.)
When I peered round, I saw that Robert wasn’t laughing. He seemed preoccupied, but then, Dougie did have his feet up on the glass coffee table, and Kirstie had disarranged the carefully stacked photographic books.
I wondered if he was seeing the reeling in a different light, now that he’d read Violet’s notebook and the postcards. Imagining his beautiful golden-haired great-grandmother, dancing with the portly Prince of Wales.
I realized Fraser was talking to me, and jerked to attention.
“You did brilliantly tonight!” he said. “Don’t tell her, but it took Alice weeks to work out Hamilton House.”
“Really?” I said, warmed by the affectionate pride in his voice.
Fraser paused his systematic plate stacking, and dropped his voice. “I don’t want to sound overbearing, but I still haven’t heard from her. She is okay, isn’t she? You know what she’s normally like about returning calls.”
I squirmed. I hated lying to Fraser, but I was clueless myself.
As with most men, conversations of this nature came about as easily to Fraser as banjo playing. “Evie, I hope you’d tell me if I’ve done something wrong. Or”—he hesitated—“if I made a mistake in inviting her up here?”
“Fraser, it’s nothing like that. She adores you.”
“Steady on.” He looked down shyly at the cutlery basket, and I envied Alice, having this gentle giant of a man so mad about her. If she was going to stand him up, she could at least put some effort into softening the blow.
“She—she doesn’t want to let you down,” I went on, my imagination embroidering the scene between historical Major Fraser in uniform and Alice in ringlets, writing a note begging forgiveness for her unexplained absence. “She’s just indisposed, with her sprained ankle, and wouldn’t want to make you sit out the ball because she couldn’t dance.”
Fraser looked confused. “Indisposed … ?”
Maybe I’d gone too far.
“She’s probably knocked out on painkillers,” I said. “That’s maybe why she hasn’t called. I’ll be trying to get hold of her myself tomorrow—I’ll tell her to ring.”
“Would you? That would be awfully kind,” said Fraser. “And, you know, I really do hope you enjoy the ball. It’s a rather special evening.” Sadness jutted his lower lip. “Just a shame we’ll be missing Alice.”
Awfully. Alice so didn’t deserve him.
Eighteen
At eleven, Catriona announced that she needed to get up in the morning for “a very important meeting,” and the evening came to a halt as Fraser offered to drive everyone home.
We drifted outside, where the full moon was reflecting off the soft banks of whiteness until it felt almost like daytime. An owl hooted somewhere in the distance, but otherwise everything was still and magical. I breathed in a deep lungful of sharp night air.
“Jeez, it’s cold,” said Kirstie. “Dougie, get in that car and warm me up. Night, Robert! Thanks for the spaghetti. Sorry about the mess on your nice white sofa. My mum swears by white wine vinegar.”
“No worries,” said Robert, though I noticed Catriona gave her a death look.
Fraser bleeped his Land Rover with the remote, and Dougie yanked the door open for Kirstie, bundling her in enthusiastically as she blew Robert a kiss off her gloves.
“Good night, Robbie,” said Catriona. “You’re still on for supper tomorrow night at mine?” She leaned up and went to kiss him on the lips, just as he turned his head to answer Fraser’s question about winter tires. She ended up with his cheekbone.
Awkward, I thought.
No, actually, awkward was the way she grabbed his chin, dragged his face to hers, and planted a kiss right on his lips while we all watched, complete with Mmmmmm noise.
“Night, Catriona,” I said. “Thanks for the instructions.”
She got in on the passenger side, ignoring the squeals from the backseat. “No problem. Let me know if you need those diagrams explained.”
“Do you want a lift up to the house?” Fraser nodded toward the car.
“No, it’d be quicker for me to walk,” I said. “By the time you’ve gone round via the road—”
“Oh, you can’t walk on your own—” he started.
“I’ll walk Evie back,” Robert interrupted. “Take me ten minutes. I’ll get my coat.”
I turned round, surprised. “You don’t have to.”
“I do. Can’t have you getting eaten by bears in the woods. As I’m sure Cat’s mother would tell you, losing one girl from our set is careless, losing two is bad hosting. Wait there.” He turned back to Fraser. “You guys get away.”
“If you’re sure?” Fraser looked at me, then when Robert disappeared inside whispered, “You don’t have to be polite. I’m happy to drive you over!”
I raised a hand. “How often do you get to see a night sky like this in London?”
“Never.” We both looked up at the inky northern sky, speckled with tiny diamond points, and I stole a swift sideways glance at Sensitive Countryman Fraser, one for the mental scrapbook.
“Right!” Robert was back, jangling his keys. “Let’s go.”
I waved as Fraser reversed his Land Rover expertly in the snow—not even a tiny wheel spin—and drove off down the track toward the road. Dougie’s and Kirstie’s silhouettes wrestled in the back. I bet Catriona gave them one minute exactly before telling them to belt up and shut up.
“Brought you this,” said Robert, offering me his trapper hat. He’d pulled on a beanie over his own ears and was bundled up in his ski jacket so only his bright eyes and sharp nose were properly visible.
“Thanks.” I pulled it on. It was warm but huge, and nearly reached my nose. “Ooh. I can’t hear anything.”
“Hang on.” Robert leaned forward and grabbed the two earflaps, tying them on top of my head. “I save this one for outdoor pursuits. Means when people ask me what I plan to do with my enormous house, I can pretend not to hear them. Only drawback is that I can’t wear it inside.”
> I gave him a look. “You could try having an opinion about your enormous house.”
He returned my look with extra pointedness. “I do. You know what it is. Now, shall we?”
Our feet made satisfying crumping noises in the night stillness, and the moon bathed the landscape with surreal pale blue light, casting shadows under trees.
“Don’t you think this is like walking through Narnia?” I breathed.
“Hmm, I haven’t skied there,” said Robert. “Is it European?”
“No, it’s— Oh, shut up,” I said.
We walked side by side, our arms swinging a few centimeters apart. I was very conscious of how private it felt to be walking alone together at this late hour, in this silent, secret forest. His silent, secret forest, in fact. I wondered if Robert felt it too; neither of us spoke for a few minutes.
“Thanks for another dancing lesson,” I said, to break the silence. “It was sweet of you to arrange it.”
“My pleasure. Thanks for not destroying any of my furniture. I see you picked up Hamilton House quickly enough.”
“The story helps,” I said. “The husband, the lover, the future lover—and then the husband doing exactly the same. I like things with stories attached.”
“Ah, this is about the postcards, isn’t it? Our very own transatlantic fairy tale.” He said it in a slightly sardonic way, and I glanced sideways. Robert was staring straight ahead, his eyes on the path.
“That’s a real fairy tale, though. The chance meeting, the American princess, the love that lasted till Ranald died. Anyway,” I went on, sensing he was about to launch into more remorseless bubble-bursting, “the proof’ll be in the dancing. It was good of Catriona to come round and teach me.”
“She enjoyed it. She likes telling people what to do.”
“I’d noticed.” I hesitated. “I don’t want to mess it up for her.”
“Why?”
“Why?” The atmosphere between us hummed with something unspoken. Robert couldn’t see my face, so I threw caution to the winds. “Because I get the impression that this first reel thing is more of an exhibition dance for you and the future Mrs. Kettlesheer than anything else.”