by Anya Karin
“Breath,” Olga corrected. “Breathtaking.”
“Yes, that.”
“Look here,” Olga said.
Kenna turned slowly to face the mirror behind her as though she wasn’t sure she wanted to see.
“Oh,” she said. “I can’t...I can’t believe this.”
She smoothed the elegant green silk of her gown down along her slim waist and looked herself up and down.
“I’ve never worn anything like-”
“You should get used to it Miss Kenna. Or, Lady Kenna, I suppose is more correct?”
Kenna gently chewed her bottom lip before Olga tisked at her and repainted her ruby lips.
“Sorry, I’m just not accustomed to this.”
Olga smiled at her like her mother did.
“Why are we doing this, anyway? What’s the point of this big banquet and a dance and all this?”
“Miss Kenna, you are to become the new Lady Macdonald. That’s not a something that happens every day. Or every week. In fact, it’s something that only happens every fifteenth year or so.” She giggled at her naughty joke. “It’s very important for the Laird to show you to his peers, I can’t pretend I understand the proceedings, but there will be a grand feast of which you can eat almost nothing owing to your dress. Then there will be a masquerade ball where you’ll be able to only barely dance-”
“Owing to my dress.” Kenna frowned.
“But it won’t be very long,” Olga said. “Laird Macdonald isn’t as young as you. He’ll need his rest before the evening gets too long.”
They shuffled her out of her chamber, giggling all the way.
Outside, Ramsay Macdonald, elegant in his waistcoat and finery, awaited her.
“Dear,” he said. “You look stunning. You’ll certainly do.”
I bet I’ll do, Kenna thought.
Her hand went to her neck and the tiny glass globe secreted below her collar. Something about the hard, round ornament, safe between her breasts made Kenna Moore smile, at least for a moment.
Kenna’s eyes glazed over as Laird Macdonald explained in excruciating detail how the evening was to go.
“First, there will be a fife and pipe band,” he said. He didn’t like drums because they made his eyes water. “Orrick will announce the visitors for our meal, and then he’ll announce us, with you as my fiancée. We’ll sit and then we’ll eat. You do know how to eat properly, yes?”
His voice condescended so horribly that Kenna smiled with her lips closed so he couldn’t see how tight she had her jaws.
“Knife on the left, fork on the right, finger goes down the stem of the silverware. Tines on the fork point downward.”
“Very good. There’s hope for you yet.”
Kenna swallowed her protest.
“And then,” he continued, “we’ll have our courses of food, lots of idle conversation which I cannot stand and in which you shall not partake in favor of appearing to have careful manners.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh good, she’s learning how to address her superiors,” Macdonald smiled. “Keep that up and you’ll be fine.”
If Gavin’s out there anywhere, if he’s really this Edinburgh ghost, you’ll be sorry if he finds me here, Kenna thought. He won’t leave me in a place like this.
She nodded.
“And then the dancing whereupon I pretend to want it to happen. I expect you to feign having a good time with as many useless nobles as possible. It makes it appear as though you have free will to do as you wish. And it makes you appear more vigorous. Understood?”
Again, Kenna just nodded. She thought it was a lucky thing that Olga and Elena spent so much time applying her blush, because there was absolutely not a speck of color left on her cheeks.
“W – who is coming to the dance?”
“God only knows. Whatever riff-raff Orrick sent invitations to. I imagine he sent them to every minor noble within a day’s ride, and many of them are so idle that they’ll come just for something to do. Or, more likely, to be seen. Even though this is a party for us, dear little Kenna, no one coming actually has interest in you or I. Instead they’re here to get other nobles drunk and try to pry money out of them, or to secure positions for their bastards, or their half-wit children that can’t do anything else.”
“I miss Fort Mary,” she said.
“I’m sure you do. Simple people don’t have so many worries as important ones. An unfortunate fact. But, don’t worry. You’ll soon be able to retire from the public eye and be little more than my breeding mare.”
Her jaw dropped.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I’m a bit surprised that you’re shocked. Your being here is an effect of convenience. I’m getting on in life. Sixty-two this year. I have no heirs. My previous wife – ah, wives – have been barren. Or I am, I suppose. But that can’t be, because in my youth I sired many illegitimate children on any number of serving girls.”
“Well, sir, is it possible that your age changed your virility?” Kenna wished she could go back in time three seconds and make herself bite her naughty tongue.
From the door immediately behind them, she heard Olga and Elena tittering. Spying! She thought.
In response, Ramsay Macdonald just glared for a moment and then said: “try that sort of wit again and you’ll be beaten.”
Kenna looked at the floor and let her eyes slide across the richly carved baseboards to the stairs.
“Hm. We’ve less than a half hour until the ridiculous charade begins. Please, come this way.” Macdonald offered the crook of his arm to Kenna. “Oh, Orrick, could you do me a favor?”
“Yes sir, of course.”
“Show my bride to be the proper way to eat soup. I don’t want her to be any more of an embarrassment than she already is. That hair, it’s so red. So bright and colorful. If only it could be more restrained,” he said.
“Of course, sir.” Orrick said.
Kenna took his hand, and they were only a half-step past the Laird when Kenna felt a finger hook inside her collar, and yanked her backwards, driving a gasp from her chest.
“You might be an embarrassment, and you might be from a bad family, from a wild part of the world where no one decent would ever want to go. That might all be true.”
Ramsay Macdonald lowered his head so close to Kenna’s neck that she felt his breath as he inhaled her scent. A shudder crept through her, then hitched in her throat.
“But even so, you’ll give me all the children I want.” He squeezed her belly hard enough to hurt. “You’re mine forever, Kenna. You may as well get used to it, because nothing is going to change this. Not now, not ever. Understand?”
“Come along, Kenna,” Orrick said. “We’ve got much to do before the party. If you’ll please excuse us, Laird Macdonald, we’ll be on our way.”
Looking back as she felt the marble floor, cold under her thinly-soled shoes, Kenna saw Ramsay Macdonald glaring at her, his close-lipped grin menacing. Even with his spindly legs and great belly that tested the buttons on his waistcoat, he was imposing.
“Don’t worry about him,” Orrick said. “As long as he doesn’t grow angry with you, there’s nothing to fear. He’s too lazy for any real cruelty. Smile at him. Now.”
Both of them flashed their best smiles at the man at the top of the stairs who bowed with exaggerated depth, but never took his hand off the baluster.
You’d best keep your hand on that thing, else you’ll fall straight down these stairs, end over end, Kenna thought, and no one would help you.
“And that’s about the extent of it. Do you have any questions?” Orrick said. “And I mean about anything – the house or the event.”
“Why is he so hateful?”
“You’re direct. I miss that about the Highlands.” He sighed. “There are many reasons, but none of them good, I’m afraid. I’ve run Laird Macdonald’s business and social life since I was a young man , and as you can see, I’m not no longer in the spring of my years.”
>
The old man smiled, his wrinkled face kind, and lined where he smiled.
“You’ve been up north, then?”
“Aye, lass, I have.” Orrick allowed his brogue to seep back into his voice. “I was not always Orrick the butler. But, that was long ago. Another lifetime, it seems. A story for another time, perhaps. We’ve got only a few moments before the guests start to arrive. Any questions you have, ask them now while we’re alone.”
Kenna searched her mind. She had a whole bundle of them, but as soon as she began to ask one, it slipped past her thoughts forgotten.
“I know you’re nervous. Everythin’ will be fine, wee li’l lass.”
Somehow, just hearing Orrick slip into his old highland accent comforted Kenna.
“I just feel so alone,” she said. “I don’t know anyone, I don’t want to be here, and I’m not sure if Gavin’s even alive.”
“Ach, who’s Gavin, then? An old flame?”
“Yes, well, I suppose that’s the best way to explain it. We were never together; we lived on opposite ends of Fort Mary and rarely saw each other save for festivals.”
“But you held a candle for him?”
“I did. And he gave me this.”
With a great deal of effort, Kenna yanked the shriveled thistle flower in its flat glass circle, from her gown.
“Did he, then? That’s a serious thing to give someone. He meant to make you his wife?”
“I don’t know if he really thought about that sort of thing.” Kenna blushed as she thought that in a perfect world, or one that was even slightly better, she’d be in Gavin’s arms right now, wherever he was, instead of the lecherous clutches of Ramsay Macdonald.
“But you hoped.”
Kenna nodded.
“What’s the matter, wee lass? Isn’t he back in Fort Mary?”
“No,” Kenna sniffed. “No. He came down here when Bonnie Prince Charlie-”
“Best not mention that.”
“Right. I mean, he went to Edinburgh a couple of years ago and never made his way back north. There have been some newspaper reports, but...”
“Newspapers, lass? Is he important?”
Before she could catch herself, Kenna mentioned the Ghost, and a half a second later, Orrick’s eyes got very big.
“I think...”
“I’m sorry,” Kenna said. “I didn’t mean to say that. I must have just seen something that put the thought in my head. Forget I said anything.”
Ignoring her, Orrick smiled a thin, tired smile.
“You know what they say, lass? They say that for every man who does wrong, there’s one who does right. You’ve heard the saying?”
“Aye, from my Pa.”
“I think this Gavin of yours, if that be who I think of, is doing enough good for a hundred villains. A thousand, maybe. He might even be good enough to make up for King George’s cruelty.”
It was Kenna’s turn to have big eyes.
“But,” his voice returned to the affected north English accent he had when they met. “There will be time for that, now, we must-”
Interrupting him, a fife blew a flat note, and corrected itself.
“Dear?” Laird Macdonald called from the top of the stairs. He spoke loud enough for the small clutch of visitors who’d appeared in the entry way to hear his false kindness. “Dearest Kenna? Please, come to me. We’ve got guests to entertain.
Chapter Eight
“And that,” Ramsay Macdonald said. “That is why the French and the English keep fighting, and the French keep losing!”
A round of polite laughter went around the table. Everyone around them busied themselves scraping their knives and the tines of their forks around the fine china that Laird Macdonald insisted upon using even though Orrick told him it was too gauche to use such fine dishes with cheap silverware. If anyone noticed, they didn’t speak up.
For what seemed like eternity, the nobles of all sorts sat in a very obvious hierarchy with Macdonald at the head of the table. Minor peers, four generations removed from any real wealth sat alongside new money made when the Crown took the Jacobite land. The men and ladies who were of a station to command respect were given a bit of room at the elbows, while those Macdonald thought less important, or at least less likely to assist him in some way, were crowded into the center of the table, so that their elbows struck one another when they cut their roast pork.
Even Sheriff Alan was there, though almost unrecognizable without his black plug of chew, and without the brown streaks in his wig.
Kenna poked at a thin slice of meat, ate two pieces of turnip boiled so long they were almost liquid. She once lifted a piece of pork from the plate, but her hand shook so badly that she just put it down and returned her hands to her lap. No matter how she tried to attend to one or another of the droll conversations all around her, Kenna’s thoughts simply wouldn’t leave the dark-haired teenager who gave her the ornament round her neck. She couldn’t push what Orrick said from her mind, about his goodness.
More than once, Macdonald elbowed her in the ribs and prompted her to laugh at a joke or gasp at some terrible news that invariably was about some filthy peasant thinking himself above his station.
She drew a face in the gravy that pooled on either side of the pork slice, and that was the only time she smiled.
Suddenly, at the other end of the massive oaken table, a waistcoat indistinguishable from the other waistcoats stood up and adjusted a wig indistinguishable from the other wigs.
Kenna wished that the pork had been poisoned.
A fat pair of fingers held aloft a glass and gently clanged a fork against the crystal. Everyone silenced themselves.
This whole thing is so rehearsed, Kenna thought, how are these people not driving themselves insane? Or maybe they already have...
“Hullo! Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention?”
Kenna looked at him, bemusedly, as he gesticulated and opened his mouth overly wide to speak.
“As we all know, the reason we’ve been invited to Laird Macdonald’s beautiful estate, given him by His Majesty King George I, God rest his soul,” he took a breath and everyone bowed their heads, “is to celebrate the joining of our gracious host, Ramsay Macdonald, Seventh Earl of Kilroyston, to the lovely...ah, the lovely...”
A woman tugged the speaker’s hand and whispered in his ear.
“Of course, the lovely Kenna Moore of Fort Mary, a town in the highlands which I hear is quite quaint. Aren’t those highlanders a wonderful bunch?”
Even as she smiled, Kenna’s blood boiled. A hand on the shoulder from her husband-to-be forced her to swallow the rage as a round of laughs and soft clapping went around the table. Alan ran his tongue along his teeth, picked something from between his molars with a grotesque suck, and stared at Kenna as he applauded.
“What a wonderful toast,” Macdonald said with only a slight grimace. “Now, shall we adjourn to the ballroom? The rest of the guests should be there already. Our fife and pipe band will continue to entertain, and you’re welcome to dance as long as you like, though I must warn you that at my age, one retires early.”
As the patriarch stood, so did the children. He smiled and waved and bowed and shook gloved hands with those who dared to approach him. A few moments later, the dining hall was empty save for Ramsay, Kenna, and a couple of the kitchen staff busily taking away plates and sneaking morsels.
“Remember what I told you,” he said. “You’re to have a good time. It looks best for me if you’re smiling. Do you understand?”
“Yes, of course, sir.” Kenna said.
She was tired of the game, tired of playing along with the charade. Just a little longer, she told herself, a couple of hours and this will all be over.
Again, she looked at the soup, then the pork.
Why couldn’t it be poisoned?
Noise of music and stomping feet and laughter greeted Kenna as she turned down the hallway to the ballroom. Her Earl of Kilroyston remained behind, he
said, to meet with someone in his antechamber, but would be down afterward.
As she rounded the final turn and the swell of some barely recognizable folk song or another one met her ears, Kenna remembered that she was supposed to wear a mask. There was no time though, for her to go back, so she just walked into the massive room and drank in the scene.
Far more people than were at the stuffy dinner were packed into Macdonald’s great hall. All sorts of different tartans were present, all very neatly bundled and tied. Most of the colors stayed in tightly packed groups, but it wasn’t long, as Kenna sat back and watched, until many of the men began to drink enough that the colors mixed and subdued dancing turned into something much more furious.
She searched the crowd for Orrick, or for anyone she recognized, but that was foolhardy at best. Behind masks she watched men with long hair, men with short hair, men with beards and those clean shaven drinking and dancing. She watched ladies in the finest gowns she’d ever seen swirling around the floor as though they weren’t being crushed half to death by their corsets.
Two men caught her eye. They were obviously as out of place as she was, but they were laughing between themselves. They’re wearing Macdonald tartan, but they’re just wandering around. I wonder...
“Milady?”
Kenna jumped.
“Sorry to have surprised you, milady, but I couldn’t help notice that you were looking rather lost. Might I have a dance?”
Without really taking her eyes off the three men across the room, Kenna said of course, and bowed deeply, sucking wind right before bending, as Olga showed her.
The gentleman was kind enough, his dainty touch on her back barely there. Kenna twirled when he urged, dipped when he leaned. She even ended up leading half the time when the gentle-faced man seemed unsure. As they moved across the floor, she noticed that a third man joined the two she was watching, and parted from an elegant looking lady with a kiss that was a bit too long to be proper.
He parted from her with a smile and a bow, which she returned.
When he moved away, she once again glimpsed the three out of place men, though there were only two now – one very big and one very slender. The one with the longer haired tied back in a sensible ponytail had gone somewhere. Kenna caught up with him as he leaned lazily on one of the tables ringing the dance floor, got a cracker with some sort of meat folded on top of it, and slipped one of the forks into his sporran. Judging by the size of it, that wasn’t the first thing to disappear into the man’s pouch, though a moment later after he rejoined his fellows, the pocket had somehow emptied, for it was flat again.
