thought returning to Scotland a good idea? Lady Selina Albright eyed the wrought-iron candelabra suspended from ancient oak beams and the grey stone walls covered with ragged tapestries, great swords and rusting pikes, and suppressed the urge to flee.
Having run from two eminently eligible bridegrooms, one more would put her beyond the pale. Not even her father’s considerable influence would prevent her from being gazetted a jilt.
And besides, this one was her choice. Finally.
All around her, dark-coated gentlemen and sumptuously gowned women, their jewels flashing with every movement, filled Carrick Castle’s medieval banqueting hall.
‘I hadn’t expected it to be such a squeeze,’ observed Chrissie, Lady Albright, her father’s wife of only a year and the reason Selina had agreed to this trip.
Not that she would ever have been so unkind as to tell Chrissie the truth.
‘He must have invited every member of the Scottish nobility,’ Selina said. ‘At any moment I expect to see Banquo’s ghost or three witches hunched over a cauldron.’ A shiver ran down her spine. ‘I should have waited in London for the end of Algernon’s tour of duty.’
She glanced across the huge chamber to where Lieutenant the Right Honourable Algernon Dunstan, conversed with another officer in front of the enormous hearth decorated with stag antlers. Fair-haired and slender, he looked dashing in his red militia uniform. Not quite the brilliant catch her father had expected, but he was a young man of good family with a kindly disposition. The kind of man who would make a pleasant husband.
He caught her eyeing him and bowed.
She inclined her head and smiled. He was the reason she was here: to bring him up to the mark and get her out of her father’s house, where she felt decidedly underfoot.
‘I think it is all very romantic,’ Chrissie said, looking around her with wide-eyed appreciation. ‘I feel as if I have been transported between the covers of Waverly. Is Dunross Keep equally enchanting?’
‘Dunross is about as romantic as an open boat on the North Sea in winter.’ It was hard to imagine she’d fallen in love with the keep when she first saw it some ten years before. She’d been a foolish impressionable child, she supposed. ‘Nowhere near as grand as this and as cold and damp in summer as it is no doubt freezing in winter. Did Father tell you the local people hate us because we are English? They think of us as usurpers, you know.’ For some obscure reason her father, the lord of the manor, wished to visit there next—something he had not told her before they left London and the real reason she was regretting her agreement to accompany him. Dunross was the last place in the world she wished to visit.
‘Oh, my word,’ Chrissie gasped. ‘Who is that?’
Selina followed the direction of her gaze.
A hard thump of her heart against her ribs was a painful recognition of the tall man in Highland dress framed within the stone arched entry. Ian Gilvry. The self-proclaimed Laird of Dunross.
The reason she hated Scotland. A knot formed in her stomach and made it hard to breathe as her gaze took him in.
He was not the gangling youth she remembered, though she would have known him anywhere. He was virile and brawny and, despite his green-and-red kilt, exceedingly male.
His features were far too harsh and dark to be called handsome in the drawing rooms of London, and the frill of white lace at his wrists and throat did nothing to soften his aura of danger. The raw vitality he exuded drew and held every female eye in the room. Including her own.
He was the last man she had expected or wanted to see at Lord Carrick’s drum. Hopefully, he wasn’t here to make trouble.
His gaze swept the room and, to her chagrin, her heart raced as she waited for some acknowledgement of her presence in his sky-blue eyes. When his gaze reached her and halted, she couldn’t breathe. Her heart tumbled over.
An expression of horror flickered across his face, then his gaze moved on. The sting of rejection lashed her anew. Ridiculous. She cared not one whit for Ian Gilvry’s opinion. He might have been the first man, or rather boy, to kiss her, but it had been a clumsy attempt and not worth thinking about. Especially not when their families were at daggers drawn.
‘Who is he?’ Chrissie whispered.
‘Ian Gilvry of Dunross,’ she murmured. No further explanations were needed.
Chrissie looked down her nose. ‘That is Ian Gilvry? What is he doing here? I thought only the real nobility were invited.’
Selina winced at the sudden urge to protest the scornful tone. ‘He is a distant cousin to Lord Carrick. On his mother’s side.’
‘That costume is positively indecent in polite company.’ Chrissie sniffed, clearly reflecting her husband’s opinion of all things Gilvry. On anyone else Chrissie would have declared it romantic. ‘He looks positively barbaric.’
He did. Deliciously so.
Oh, that was not the way she should be thinking about a man who held her and her family in contempt.
‘It is the traditional garb of the Highlands.’
‘I am surprised you would defend him,’ Chrissie said with a little toss of her head.
She felt herself colour. ‘I am stating a fact.’ When Chrissie stared at her with raised brows, she realised she’d spoken more sharply than she intended. She shrugged.
From the corner of her eye, she watched Ian stroll across the room to greet a friend with a smile that lit his face and transformed him from stern to charming.
What, was she still fooled by his smile? Hardly. She didn’t give tuppence for Ian Gilvry or his brothers. They were proud, arrogant men who would stop at nothing to put her father off land they considered their own.
As if sensing her watching, he glanced her way. Their gazes clashed for no more than a second. Heat flooded her cheeks. She swiftly turned away.
‘Look, Sel,’ Chrissie said, ‘there is Lady Carrick. Your father particularly asked me to get to know her better and this is the first time she has not been surrounded by crowds of people. Will you be all right here by yourself?’
Selina swallowed a sharp retort. Chrissie was being her usual sweet self and she had promised herself she would vanquish her annoyance at the young woman’s attempt to play the mother. ‘I am perfectly content to remain here and await your return.’ She gave an airy wave of her fan and hoped Chrissie would not see the effort it cost her not to show her impatience.
Chrissie bustled away with a wifely determination that brought a genuine smile to Selina’s lips and a warm feeling to her chilly heart. She hadn’t expected to like her father’s new wife, but they rubbed along quite well, most of the time.
Unfortunately, Chrissie’s unflagging solicitude and her unfailing kindness made Selina feel increasingly like a guest in her father’s house. It had become a source of increasing irritation since her accident had kept her confined to the house for so many months. With time for reflection, she had decided it really was time she found her own place in the world. And the only option available was to become a wife.
Unintentionally,
