Winnie swept an elaborate curtsy. “Thank ye, Charlotte. Mitchell nearly had to tie me to my chair, I was so nervous about how high she was piling my hair.” The marquis’s sister gave the black, lustrous mass a careful pat. “We’ve been practicing London styles for weeks, but this time it’s not just for fun.”
Janie bounced on her toes. “Say something flattering about my gown too, Charlotte,” she urged, chuckling.
“You are a vision in violet, Janie,” Charlotte offered obediently. The girls’ enthusiasm must have swept her up, as well, because otherwise she couldn’t explain the tingling in her fingers and all the way down her spine. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some gentleman asked for your hand in marriage tonight.”
“He can ask,” her sister returned with a laugh, “but I’m not marrying anyone yet. There are far too many parties yet to come this Season.”
With a loud sigh, Winnie plunked herself down onto the floor to scratch Una. The portrait of young despondence almost made Charlotte smile, but she refrained from doing so. “What’s amiss, Winnie?”
“It’s only the talk of marrying,” Rowena said, sighing again.
“You did mention something about a beau back at Glengask. Do you miss him?”
“Aye. Lachlan MacTier. I miss him dreadfully. But I’ve been here for nearly five days and been gone from home for nearly twice that, and he still hasn’t sent me a single letter.”
“Have you written him? Perhaps he doesn’t know your address here.”
“I’ve written him every day.”
Charlotte hid her grin behind her hand. Had she ever been that young? “Perhaps that’s the difficulty, then,” she said aloud, sinking to the carpet and joining in on scratching the wiry-haired hound.
“What do you mean?”
“Just that a man can’t miss you if you’re always about.”
“But I’m not about. I’m hundreds and hundreds of miles away.”
“Your letters aren’t. They’re there to greet him, every day. And if he isn’t writing to you, then it’s because you’ve answered all of his questions.”
Gray eyes much less fierce than her brother’s blue ones gazed at her for a long moment. “You’re absolutely brilliant!” Winnie chirped, hugging her. “I’m not going to write him another letter.” She frowned. “Unless … Should I write to say that I’m not writing him? I don’t want him to think I’m angry with him—though I am, a bit.”
“No,” Janie chimed in. “Let him wonder. Perhaps he’ll think you’ve found a beau here in London. And you might, because you do look very pretty tonight.”
With Simms’s assistance Charlotte climbed once more to her feet. “You two will only find beaux if we actually attend the soiree.” Taking a last glance at her hair to make certain it would stay in place, she urged them out her door. With some difficulty they closed Una in Winnie’s bedchamber and then hurried down the stairs.
Her parents were already waiting in the foyer, and had to take a moment to admire each of them in turn. Evidently she generally didn’t dress so fancily, because both of them commented on her attire and her hair, as well. How odd that they and Jane all thought some man must have caught her eye; in the past two years none of them had ever mentioned such a thing when she dressed for a party.
Longfellow helped her with her wrap, and then she took Winnie’s to assist the marquis’s sister. “May I ask you a question?” she murmured, beneath the sound of the chattering around her.
“Of course.”
Charlotte took a breath. It was just curiosity. Nothing more. “I don’t know Highland or clan tradition, but your brother is one-and-thirty, yes? Is there a reason he hasn’t yet married?”
“I think he’s been too busy,” Rowena replied, her expression becoming more thoughtful. “And I think he worried before that I would feel pushed aside if he brought another lass into the house. But I’m eighteen now, so that’ll likely change.” She grimaced briefly. “I just hope he doesn’t decide to marry Bridget Landry. Her family lives the closest, and she’s pretty and all, but when she laughs it sounds like crows are dying.”
Charlotte snorted. “Oh, Winnie.”
“No, it’s true. And she takes all the best bits at dinner for herself. Ran would let her, because he wants everyone to be happy, but sometimes I’m happiest to see him with the last strawberry of the season. I don’t know that Bridget would ever think of that.” Winnie shrugged. “Though worrying over who gets a wee strawberry is a mite silly, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think so,” Charlotte replied, trying to reconcile her image of Ranulf MacLawry with that of a man who enjoyed strawberries and who liked to see everyone around him happy. “I think it’s lovely.”
“Come along, ladies,” her father said abruptly, making her jump. “If we’re late you’ll only have me to dance with.”
“I wouldn’t mind that, Papa,” Jane said stoutly.
He kissed her on the cheek. “Perhaps not, but I would.”
The Evanstone soiree was the first grand ball of the Season. As such, it would likely see guests packed nearly to the high, vaulted ceiling of its two adjoining ballrooms. Luckily the rain held off, and they had only a chill wind with which to contend as they made their way past the crush of carriages to the large house’s main entrance.
Even Winnie had stopped chittering, instead taking in the sights with wide, round eyes. Charlotte couldn’t even imagine how it must all look to someone whose idea of town was a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. “Is this very different from dances at Glengask?” she whispered.
Winnie nodded, barely blinking. “We have two grand parties a year, one down at An Soadh and the other at Mahldoen, but they’re not dances, precisely. More like fairs, I suppose. All the clan comes together, and we set up tents. There’s all sorts of food and drink, and singing and dancing and pipes, caber tossing, shooting, swords. Not nearly as grand as this.”
Shooting and swords? Hopefully at targets and not at each other. Charlotte kept that to herself, though. Tonight was for Rowena and Jane. For a moment she tried to imagine some of the carefully coiffed guests here tossing cabers and drinking ale from mugs and dancing to bagpipes. If not for the accompanying violence, it would likely be … exhilarating.
Once the butler introduced Lord Hest and party in a ringing voice, they made their way to the nearest of the two interconnected ballrooms. They’d opened the folding walls in between them, making one breathtakingly huge space with chairs lining the walls, huge fireplaces at either end, and a dozen floor-length windows leading outside to a balcony with steps down to the garden and pond below. The outside was lit with torches, the inside with eight chandeliers, and everything glittered.
“Oh, glory,” Winnie murmured. Charlotte turned to agree with her, but then realized that the debutante wasn’t looking at the decorations. She was gazing at her brother.
“Oh, glory,” Charlotte echoed, following her gaze.
The Marquis of Glengask stood close by one wall, his gaze moving from man to man as though searching for enemies. But for once it wasn’t his deep blue eyes that caught Charlotte’s attention. Every other male present wore proper coats, waistcoats, and trousers or breeches with either boots or shoes. Like them, Ranulf had donned a coat—his a dark gray with large black buttons edged in silver, and a trio of identical buttons bright on each sleeve. His waistcoat was black with the same black and silver buttons, while his snow white-cravat was pierced by a silver and onyx pin.
From the waist down, however, he was clearly not an Englishman. Instead of trousers he wore a kilt of black and gray, with red thread cutting through the darker squares like blood. In front of his … manhood a silver and black pouch hung from a silver chain that looked like it went around his waist. His knees were bare, while black wool stockings covered his calves. On his feet he wore black leather-looking shoes bound halfway up his calves with more strips of leather.
The effect was … Charlotte swallowed. He looked wild and mad and dangerous and simply mesmerizing. On occasion some of the older statesmen wore kilts to soirees, but no one paid much attention to their quaint ways. This was very different. All around her she could hear the whispers, too, mostly from women. Piercing blue eyes met hers, and then he was walking across the floor, the crowd parting to make room for him as he approached. She felt abrupt heat between her thighs.
“Rowena, ye look very fine,” he said in his low brogue, smiling at his sister.
That smile was dangerous, too, because it made Charlotte’s heart flutter, and made her remember his capable mouth and that extraordinary kiss. Rowena, though, wasn’t smiling back at him. “What are you doing?” she whispered.
“I’m standing here,” he returned coolly.
“Ye’re wearing clan colors. Are you looking for a fight?”
“Nae. I’m Scottish. I’m a Highlander. And this is how a Highlander dresses. Or have ye already forgotten?”
His sister looked at him closely. “No trouble?”
He shook his head. “Nae trouble. Not from me.”
Charlotte didn’t know how he could say that, when every inch of him practically radiated trouble and very male heat. When he turned his gaze to her, she refused to look away, or to lower her eyes to take in his attire. She tried not to blush, but given the warmth of her cheeks she hadn’t managed that feat. “I see that you heard my advice,” she finally said.
Ranulf tilted his head. “What advice was that? Oh, the bit where ye told me t’fit in.” He held his arms out from his sides. “I decided against it.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
He took a half step closer. “Will ye give me that wee dance card of yers, then, or do ye reckon I’m too Scottish fer yer taste?”
She’d expected him to ask whether she was too cowardly to dance with him or not, and she had an answer for that—she preferred not to make a public stir. But he hadn’t worded it that way, and now she couldn’t refuse him without looking like the aristocratic English snob he so obviously disdained. And she wasn’t prepared to be disdained. Not by him. And aside from that, part of her did want to dance with him.
Silently she pulled the small dance card and pencil from her reticule and handed it over. Their fingers brushed, and even through her emerald-colored gloves she felt the heat of him. Out of the corner of her eye she noted that the rest of her family was chatting with several other late arrivals and introducing Winnie around. Or they were pretending to, anyway.
Wonderful.
Did they think that a man had indeed caught her eye, and that Ranulf MacLawry was that man?
“So this is you simply being you, is it?” she ventured in a low voice. “You’re not making a statement or showing your contempt for my fellows?”
His grin deepened. “It’s just clothes, lass.” He patted himself on the chest, his silver buttons glittering. “All proper up top, and fun down below.”
“Oh, good heavens.” Because of that, now she couldn’t help recalling every bawdy song and poem she’d ever heard about a Scotsman and what he wore beneath his kilt. Which, if the stories were true, was precisely nothing. “Write your name down, and return my dance card.”
“Call me Ranulf again.”
She took a deep breath, feigning annoyance. What was it about him that roiled up her insides? Everything logical said she should want nothing to do with him, or his kilt, or his beastly manners. “Write your name down, Ranulf, and return my card. Better?”
His lifted his eyes, shadowed beneath dark lashes. “Most people dunnae speak t’me the way ye do, Charlotte,” he said softly, scrawling something on the card and handing it back to her.
She didn’t quite know how to take that. “Our sisters have become dear friends. There should be a certain honesty between us, don’t you think?”
“Is that what we’re calling it?” He studied her face, the scrutiny making her not uneasy, but unsettled. “Honestly then, Charlotte, I dunnae know what to make of ye. But I’m inclined to stay close by until I figure ye out.”
“I’m not that complicated.”
“I beg to differ.”
Because she didn’t want to meet his gaze any longer, and because people were beginning to notice her as well as him, Charlotte looked down at her dance card. And frowned. “You can’t take both waltzes.”
“I just did.”
“It’s not done, Glen—Ranulf.”
“Then if any other man cares to claim ye fer one or the other of them, he can come and try to take ye.” His smile dove into something devilish and delicious. “Though that would likely mean a brawl.”
So now he meant to use her own antipathy to violence to make her give in to something scandalous. Well. He could have the first waltz, then, but she would claim an aching head before the second one. That would eliminate both the scandal of waltzing with him twice, and the need for anyone to brawl to prevent it. Not that anyone was likely to fight for her favor; ladies without beaux seldom had champions. Especially when they’d reached her age.
“You should go claim a dance from Winnie while she still has one,” Charlotte suggested when he seemed inclined to remain standing there in front of her.
He lifted his head to glance over toward where his sister and Jane both stood surrounded by young men. Briefly his expression became alarmed, then settled back into one of slightly amused arrogance. Ranulf took a step past her, then paused to lean down. “I think ye may be a witch, Charlotte Hanover,” he murmured in her ear, “because only if I were bewitched would I forget my own duties.”
Before she could conjure a response to that, he strode over to take his sister’s card right out of Lord William Duberry’s hand. And Lord William, not known for his patience or his even temper, simply allowed it. Likewise, now that he’d left her side, other men came crowding in to claim dances from her. Most of them she refused, of course, with a smile and a verbal nudge toward the other, younger ladies, but it was … pleasant to be asked.
“You glitter like emeralds tonight, Lady Charlotte.”
The cool, careful tone caught her attention at once. Inwardly cursing, Charlotte turned around to face the man who’d spoken. “Lord Berling. What a pleasant surprise.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “A surprise that I would attend an event that everyone else in Mayfair wouldn’t miss?” The earl sent a glance over his shoulder. “Ah. A surprise that I would appear after being growled at by the barbarian Highlander. Between you and me, my lady, he growls at everyone.” He shook his head, clucking his tongue at the same time. “It must be wearying, to be so defiant about everything. I almost feel sorry for him. I
do
feel sorry for his sister, trying to have a pleasant time while he strides about flinging men away from her.”