AVALINE AND Lady Kent spent the better part of Friday afternoon preparing Avaline for the evening, and Bernadette thought their efforts were rewarded—Avaline looked like a princess in her butter-yellow gown and stomacher. Bernadette had put up Avaline’s golden hair in a tower that made her look taller than she was and had adorned it with tiny gold leaves. She couldn’t fathom how Mackenzie might look at his fiancée and not be at least a bit smitten with her.
Avaline’s preparations left precious little time for Bernadette to dress herself. She chose the gown of scarlet she’d worn to a Christmas feast two years past. There was no time to dress her hair, and she bound it simply at her nape. She looked quite plain in comparison to her charge.
At least she didn’t look as plain as Lady Kent, who had, for reasons that escaped Bernadette, chosen a drab brown gown that made her pale, slight frame look even smaller. Perhaps she meant to fade into a wall, for she’d dressed perfectly for it. Lady Kent often reminded Bernadette of a leaf scudding across the courtyard at Highfield—without substance and in a permanent tremble whenever her husband was about.
Bernadette was taller than both women and larger in frame, and she did not tremble in the presence of men, for which she owed her father grim thanks. He’d been a tyrant, not unlike Lord Kent in his way, and Bernadette had learned at an early age that weakness was to be exploited, and therefore, it was far better to stand tall and proud than to cower.
She thought it only through the grace of her grandfather and Albert that she hadn’t learned to despise all men. Her grandfather, God rest his soul, had been the kindest person she’d ever known. He would take her and her sister for long walks around Highfield, would invite them to his little house on the estate’s grounds and make them mince pies and sing songs to them. She had loved him so, had mourned him deeply when he’d died from an ague in his seventy-second year.
And, of course, Albert, the son of a shop merchant. Albert had wanted to study law, and he’d worked in his father’s dry goods shop until such time he could afford the schooling. He was bright and curious, thoughtful and tender with Bernadette, and he’d never said a cross word to her.
Albert and Grandpappa had taught Bernadette that there were men in this world who loved and cherished those in their lives. They were good, decent and loving men, both of them gone now, survived by men like Lord Kent and her father.
No, men didn’t intimidate her. No one intimidated her. She was an island unto herself, an untouchable, damaged bit of flotsam in a vast sea. Occasionally, she bumped into this ship or that buoy, but she would always spin away and continued on with her solo journey through this life.
It was past time to depart when Lady Kent and Avaline made their way downstairs to join his lordship and Bernadette. Lord Kent reeked of wine. He was impatient and made cross by the wait. He’d dressed in formal clothing and a newly styled and powdered wig. His shirt was trimmed in lace that dripped from his coat sleeves, and his neck cloth was tied so ornately it was small wonder he hadn’t choked himself in the process.
With one leg cast out, his hand on a staff that he carried for effect, he surveyed the three women before him and frowned slightly. “It will do, I suppose,” he said, and gestured for them to carry on, out the door. “Make haste, make haste, we’ll be tardy as it is.”
The ladies were ushered into the coach, and Kent put himself on a horse. Lord Ramsey was not attending this evening. According to Bernadette’s friend Charles, a footman, Ramsey had fallen into his cups far sooner than his brother and was too sodding drunk to travel. Charles was fond of Bernadette and often sought her out to regale her with news of the household. In fact, two months ago, it was Charles who told her that she would be sent to Scotland as the lady’s maid of Avaline.
“To Scotland,” she’d repeated disbelievingly. “Leave England?”
“You’ve not heard?” Charles asked, clearly exuberant in having the news before she did. “Miss Avaline is to marry one of the Highland brutes.”
Of course she’d known that Avaline was to marry a man from the Highlands, but Bernadette hadn’t, until that moment, imagined he was actually from the Highlands. She’d rather imagined a lord of some sort, with lands there, someone civilized, for everyone had heard that the Highlanders were brutal, traitorous people, and it had taken the English army to rout them.
“It’s surely temporary,” Bernadette said, thinking aloud. “I’ll be meant to settle her.”
But Charles, who had attended Lord Kent and Lady Chatwick when she and her husband had come to broker the marriage, shook his head. “You are to stay with her, as am I. As are a few more,” Charles confided. “He told the lady he’d not leave his only daughter in the hands of such primitive people.”
Wasn’t Lady Chatwick herself married to one of those primitive people? “And what did the lady say?” Bernadette asked.
“She said it was a kind thing he did to think so tenderly of his daughter, but that he could trust she would be well cared for.”
“There, you see?” Bernadette had said, walking away from Charles. “It’s only temporary.”
It was not, as it turned out, temporary. Lord Kent meant for her to stay on here with Avaline. Bernadette’s father meant for her to do the same. While she did not relish the thought of being banished to Scotland, she did realize that the farther she was from either of those men, the better.
The Kent party loaded into the coach, and it lurched forward, starting on the tortuous journey of four miles. Bernadette would have preferred to walk. In the last few days, she’d taken to walking the many paths around Killeaven. It was beautiful scenery and physically invigorating—and she’d yet to meet another person. She felt herself growing stronger, too, going farther afield every day.
She wasn’t entirely sure of how to walk to Balhaire, but she would have liked to try. It was a fine evening, and surely it couldn’t be any more taxing on the body than this coach. Or perhaps they might have gone on horseback? She honestly didn’t know if Lady Kent had ever been on the back of a horse, but Bernadette was a passable rider, as was Avaline. Unfortunately, his lordship did not think it proper for ladies to travel by horseback, not until they’d birthed all the children they were meant to have.
He had many odious opinions.
When Bernadette was certain she couldn’t bear the ride another moment, the coach reached the village on the outskirts of Balhaire and began to move up the high road. The fortress looked so foreboding as they approached it, as unwelcoming as its son.
In the bailey, three stray dogs trotted over to have a sniff of them all, and two men who looked equally astray were on hand to greet them. The unsmiling Frang wordlessly showed them to a room near the great hall, where the Mackenzies were waiting.
Bernadette was surprised to see Avaline’s fiancé dressed in a plaid blanket that fell just above his knees. He wore thick wool socks and shoes with it, a waistcoat and coat over it. It was such a peculiar dress, but it was, Bernadette had to admit, rather enticing, particularly as she could see just how muscular and long his legs were. She wondered if Avaline had noticed the same.
The room where they’d gathered was smaller and more intimate than any of the other rooms Bernadette had seen on her first visit to Balhaire. The walls had been covered with tapestries to ward off the chill that seemed to permeate the castle, but the effect was stifling, and Bernadette felt a little as if the walls were closing in on her. She stood near the door, where at least there was a bit of air.
Lord
