The Last Debutante

by Julia London

  She glanced down the hall. If only she had started in that direction, she might have pretended not to hear him. But he was already walking toward her. Daria said, “Thank you for supper, but if you will excuse me—”

  “You donna intend to leave us yet. I had high hopes that you might play again, aye?”

  Her heart seized. She couldn’t imagine anything more torturous than having to play the pianoforte with Isabella Brodie in the room. “Oh,” she said, wincing a little. “I, ah . . . I am feeling a bit—”

  “Please, Miss Babcock,” Aileen said, suddenly appearing at Jamie’s right. “The waltz.” She smiled. Warmly. Daria had never seen Aileen smile before this moment. “Please,” she said again.

  Behind her, Geordie and Robbie paused, looking back at Daria.

  “Laird Brodie is quite good with the flute. He will accompany you,” Jamie said. “It would be a great pleasure for all if you would indulge us.”

  Feeling trapped, Daria looked around at the Campbells, all of them looking at her hopefully. She could just imagine it—Jamie teaching Isabella the waltz; her having to watch them over the top of the pianoforte.

  Geordie thrust his slate before her face. Plees.

  “Aren’t you all quite persuasive.” She sighed. “Very well.”

  “Thank you, Daria,” Aileen said. It was the first time she’d ever said Daria’s name. Moreover, she sounded truly grateful.

  Daria steeled herself and allowed the Campbells to lead her into the great hall, where someone had moved the pianoforte. Aileen hurried ahead, presumably telling them all that there would be dancing.

  The Brodies eyed Daria curiously, but someone must have told them about the music, for one of them did indeed produce a flute.

  Daria sat down at the pianoforte. She looked at the people assembled, ignored the butterflies in her belly, and began to play a waltz.

  Aileen and Robbie were quick to dance, moving with surprising grace and ease around the room. She expected Jamie to stand before Isabella and bow deeply, offering his hand, so she was astounded to see Geordie grab Isabella and begin to move slowly with her around the room. Several others began to waltz, too, to her surprise. The dance was apparently spreading across Dundavie, and she couldn’t help a small smile.

  The man with the flute quickly picked up the harmony to Daria’s song, and before long, everyone was dancing and laughing. When she finished each song, Daria tried to pause, but the people pushed her along. After three songs, a man appeared with a fiddle. There was quite a lot of talk between him and the flute player, and then both looked at her expectantly. “Go on, then, lass,” Laird Brodie said. “We’ll follow your lead, aye?”

  They were remarkable musicians, really. Daria’s repertoire consisted of five or six songs, and the gentlemen were gifted enough that they could change them all with tempo and harmony. After a time, though, Daria began to grow weary of playing. Her fingers ached; she wasn’t accustomed to playing for so long.

  At the conclusion of the fifth song—played for the third time—Daria put her hands in her lap, stretching her fingers.

  Jamie walked toward her. “You deserve a rest.”

  “Thank you!” she exclaimed. “I fear my fingers will fall off.”

  “Besides, you never taught me,” he said.

  “Taught you?”

  “To dance, lass. Look at them all, waltzing. And here sits their laird, only recently off the cane.”

  She’d seen him dancing while she played, and she eyed him suspiciously. “You wish me to teach you to waltz.”

  “Aye.”

  “In front of them,” she said, nodding surreptitiously to the crowd.

  “Before all of them, aye.” He winked. “Teach this laird to dance. I command it.” His eyes were sparkling with gaiety, impossible to resist.

  “Well. If you command it.” She smiled.

  Jamie gestured for Malcolm Brodie to begin playing anew, then offered his arm to Daria. As he escorted her onto the dance floor, she was aware that everyone was watching them. In England she would have relished the attention, but here she felt conspicuous.

  “Well, then?” Jamie asked.

  Daria drew a breath and looked him in the eye. “You should place your hand on my back.”

  He stepped closer and slipped his arm around her back. “There?” he asked, his hand just above her hip.

  “Quite a bit higher.”

  He smiled. But instead of moving his hand up her back, he pulled her closer, and gazed down at her with those shining hazel eyes. “There?”

  Daria swallowed. “Not there, really, but we’ll make do.”

  His smile deepened.

  She held out her arm. “You should hold my hand.”

  He put his hand beneath her elbow, then slowly slid it down her arm to her hand, closing his fingers tightly and possessively around hers.

  Daria’s heart was beating so rapidly, she feared she might take wing. She put her hand on his shoulder. “All right, then, you will begin to your left. One two three,” she counted softly.

  He was still smiling as he moved to his left uncertainly, and then back again as Daria instructed. He picked up the dance quite easily. Before she knew it, he was moving her about, his lead firm and sure, then spinning her this way and that. He moved so well that Daria began to feel she was dancing on air. The evening slipped away, and she was aware of only the flute, and Jamie. His eyes never left her, his gaze fixed on her face.

  “You’ve waltzed before,” she said.

  He laughed and spun her about. “Perhaps once or twice.”

  “Where? Did Geordie teach you?”

  “Geordie!” He laughed roundly at that. “No, I learned in London.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” she laughingly demanded as he twirled her again.

  “What, and miss the experience of having the last debutante of Hadley Green instruct me? I’m no’ a fool.” He spun her to the right, pulling her closer. “You are a very entertaining young woman.”

  “Because I play the pianoforte? There are squads of debutantes who do.”

  “I mean you, Daria.”

  “Even though I am English?” she asked.

  “Even though.”

  She smiled up at him. “I think, Laird Campbell, that you hold England in higher regard than you let on.”

  He shook his head and dipped his gaze to her décolletage. “There is only one I hold in high regard, aye?”

  “Then you should reduce my ransom.”

  He twirled her to the left. “Never.”

  Daria laughed. “I’d be quite disappointed if you did.”

  The flute finally stopped, and a smattering of applause went up around them. Jamie’s hands slid from her body and Daria reluctantly dropped her hands as well. She was still admiring his handsome face when she became aware of someone beside her. She turned around and looked into green eyes.

  “You dance very well indeed, Laird,” Isabella said.

  Jamie inclined his head in response.

  “I beg your pardon, I donna mean to interrupt,” she said, then spoke to him in Gaelic.

  The smile bled from Jamie’s face. He looked at Daria. “Excuse me, please,” he said, and moved away.

  Daria looked at Isabella.

  Isabella smiled thinly. “It is his uncle Hamish. There is a wee bit of trouble.”

  “Ah.” Daria stood restlessly, debating how exactly to make her escape.

  “A wee bit of barley-bree, Miss Babcock?” Isabella gestured graciously to the sideboard and touched Daria’s elbow lightly.

  They moved to the sideboard, where Isabella instructed a footman to pour. She handed Daria a tot, touched her own lightly to Daria’s, then sipped. “You’ll be away to England soon, I suppose.”

  Daria wasn’t entirely certain how to respond. She glanced down at the amber liquid.

  “Jamie’s told me about the ransom,” Isabella added.

  Jamie. They were close, these two. “Yes.” Daria looked up. “
Perhaps you know my grandmother. She lives on the Brodie lands.”

  Isabella shook her head. “No.” She smiled. “There are so many Brodies, aye?”

  “Yes, that is true,” Daria said absently. Every time she looked at Isabella’s green eyes, she imagined Jamie looking into them. She glanced around, hoping to find a friendly face, someone who might rescue her.

  “I think the Campbells will miss you when you’ve gone. They all seem quite taken with you.”

  That certainly caught Daria’s attention. “Me?”

  “Aye, you,” Isabella said. Her gaze drifted over Daria. “You’re different than we are, are you no’? Rather exotic.”

  “Me?” Daria said again, stunned by what Isabella was saying.

  “In the Highlands, life is simple compared to in England, I think. It’s a wee circle. One is born into the clan, one marries into the clan, one bears children for the clan, one grows old with the clan. Our families are centuries old, aye? It’s right hard for a Sassenach to come into that circle.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Foreigner,” Isabella said, smiling a little.

  English, she meant.

  “Jamie and I will carry on the tradition as our parents did before us. Only this time, we’ll unite two powerful clans.”

  So it was decided. Daria tried to ignore the painful, tiny twist in her belly.

  “You will return to England to regale salons with tales of your journey to Scotland,” Isabella said lightly. “You’ll undoubtedly attend balls and marry one of your own, aye?”

  This was no show of friendly interest. This was a message.

  Isabella smiled and sipped again from her drink. “Well, I may no’ see you ’ere you go, so I will wish you God’s speed to England, Miss Babcock.”

  That was a dismissal if ever Daria had heard one. “Thank you.” Daria forced a smile and put her untouched whisky on the sideboard. “Good evening, Miss Brodie.”

  Having delivered her thinly veiled message, Isabella glided away.

  Daria walked in the opposite direction, out of the great hall, without looking at anyone. She walked away from Scotland and Campbells and Brodies, and summer kisses and mammoth castles.

  She wished she had never seen the naked man in her grandmother’s cottage. The image would haunt her all her life, for she had fallen in love with Jamie Campbell.

  In her rooms, Daria began to pace. She had to leave Dundavie before she lost her mind. She had found such joy these last few days, and tonight, such desperate pain. It hurt everywhere; it pressed against her chest and her head.

  She had fallen in love with her captor. She couldn’t imagine anyone else that she might ever love like this. But what did it matter? Her spring in Scotland had ruined her. No one would have her now.

  She was alone.

  Once, when she was a girl, she and Mamie had seen a bird with a broken wing. It had lain on the lawn, still very much alive, its wing at an odd angle. Other birds flew down and hopped around the poor thing, looking at it, but eventually they all flew off.

  “But who will come to save the bird?” Daria had asked Mamie.

  “No one,” Mamie had said sadly. “She has a broken wing. She cannot fly, and if she cannot fly, she cannot remain with her family. They’ve gone on without her.”

  In despair, Daria collapsed onto the window seat. The full moon cast a milky glow around the castle. Daria glanced up at the moon, wishing that someone, anyone, would come for her.

  Then a movement caught her eye. She looked down to the battlements and saw Jamie and Isabella walking arm in arm.

  A broken bird. Daria felt like a broken bird.

  Twenty-two

  THERE WERE MOMENTS in a man’s life when he no longer knew the things he thought he knew. Jamie had believed he knew what was best for the Campbells and for himself, but he was no longer certain that was true.

  Why could he not seem to be rid of the image of her? He could see her now, lying on her back, her arms behind her head, her legs crossed at the ankles, smiling up at the sky. He could see her as she’d appeared tonight, in a beautiful silk gown that hugged every feminine curve, her hair loosely knotted at her nape, her skin luminous, her eyes at once sparkling and shrewd.

  And yet, here was Isabella, her green eyes fixed on him, shining in the candlelight as they had moved around the dance floor. He had cared very much for Isabella. He still did. But something had changed in his feeling for her. Everything felt a wee bit off.

  It wasn’t because she’d cried off; he would have done the same. It wasn’t that there was anything less appealing about her.

  It was him. It was all in him. He could feel a sea swell of change in him. It felt as if his heart were turning over, end to end. Everything he’d thought he’d known was upside down.

  The evening was winding down, and the Campbells and Brodies, most now well in their cups after an evening of forced reconciliation, were staggering off to their rooms. That was where Jamie wanted to be—in his rooms, enveloped in silence so he could think—but Isabella had led him out of the great hall and outside, up to the old battlements. From here, the view of the glen in which Dundavie sat was spectacular. The full moon cast a glow so bright that Jamie could see cattle grazing next to a stream.

  Isabella stood next to him, her head resting lightly on his shoulder. “You’ve not said much this evening,” she said in Gaelic. Jamie kept his gaze on the view below, of the land his family had overseen for two centuries. “I think you are not as happy to see me as I am you.”

  “That’s not true,” he said instantly.

  She lifted her head and gave him a skeptical smile. He couldn’t escape the fact that she knew him rather well. She rested her head again on his shoulder. “You are a fortunate man, Jamie Campbell,” she said. “You’ve managed to keep your clan together when others have failed.”

  “I’ve tried,” he said. “I made a promise to my father that I would.” He’d promised that he would keep the clan as close to him as if they were his own children, that he would do everything in his power to keep them intact. But a question had dogged him of late. Did the clan want that, too?

  “I have long admired that about you,” Isabella said, turning to face him. She rested her chin on his shoulder, gazing up at him. Jamie draped his arm around her, but the closeness felt forced. There had been a time when he’d been eager for her touch, but tonight, he found it cumbersome. He wasn’t the sort of man to take pleasure with one woman in the afternoon and then kiss another that evening.

  “Your clan admires you, too, Jamie. They look to you for strength and guidance in all things. I don’t think they would like to see you sell land to the English. Or worse.”

  He looked down at her. “Worse?”

  She shrugged and looked down. “Marry one.”

  Jamie snorted, but his dismissal felt false. Hadn’t he thought of Daria in that way today? He’d rejected the foolish notion, of course, but he’d thought it all the same. “That’s ridiculous. Of course I won’t.”

  “It gladdens my heart to hear it,” she said, and smiled. “She is quite bonny.”

  “So are you,” Jamie said, noting the lack of conviction in his own voice.

  Isabella noticed it, too. Her smile grew cool. “I risked my heart coming here today, Jamie. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d refused to see me. But I think—I have always thought—that we are destined to be together. Haven’t you? For the sake of our love, and for the sake of our clans—you and I both know the Campbells and Brodies can only be made stronger with our union.”

  Jamie glanced away. What she said was true.

  Isabella cupped his chin to make him look at her again. “You and I can be made stronger, too. I’ve never believed otherwise, even after all that has happened between our families. But the Brodies are ready to forgive it for the sake of our clan. The question remains . . . will you?” She rose up on her toes and kissed the corner of his mouth. “I still love you, Jamie Campbell, I do,” she whispered.
“I hope you still love me.” She kissed him fully.

  Her lips were soft and warm, and the male in Jamie responded. She was right; of course she was his future. She was the natural, logical choice. He closed his eyes and kissed her back.

  Apparently he was the sort of man to take pleasure with one woman in the afternoon and kiss another that evening. Why, then, could he not rid himself of the image of Daria lying on her back, her arms folded behind her head, smiling up at the blue Scottish sky?

  JAMIE SLEPT VERY little that night, his heart warring with his head, his body feeling as if a good part of him had gone missing. He was up well before dawn, staring into the cold hearth, thinking. He had no idea how long he’d been sitting there—hours, maybe—when the sound of a barking dog filtered into his consciousness. He roused himself, shaking out his injured leg, and walked to the window, yawning as he pushed it open. The barking caught his attention again, and he leaned out to look.

  He saw the red head of the boy first, racing across the expanse of green of the bailey, Anlan and Aedus at his heels. The boy reached for something in the grass, pushing Anlan’s snout away from it, then turned and held it up. From that distance, Jamie couldn’t make out what it was.

  He was about to turn from the window when Daria suddenly appeared, the train of her day gown trailing in the grass behind her, leaving a path in the morning dew. She took the thing from the boy, and together they examined it. A moment later, the boy stepped back and Daria threw the thing, very poorly, across the lawn. It scudded and fell into a pond.

  The dogs raced for it. Aedus reached it first and bounded away with it, Daria and the lad, Peader, chasing after them. Aedus jumped into the pond with the thing held between his jaws, then trotted out, his tail held high, proud of his victory.

  Just as Daria and Peader reached him, Aedus and Anlan both shook out their coats, spraying them. Peader squealed with harsh laughter. Daria draped her arm around his shoulders as the two of them headed back to the keep, leaving the dogs with the toy.

  And Jamie stood at the window for a long time after they had disappeared from view, thinking.