“No kidding.”
“I can’t do this. What about school? School’s important,” I babbled. “I can’t miss that much school.”
“We’re on a pretty tight timeline here—Countdown to the Crown, wedding included, will wrap in three weeks. And we’ll primarily be filming during your Christmas break, so you won’t miss that much school.”
Great. Not only was Dusty ruining Christmas—seriously, who else besides my insane sister would be selfish enough to have a Christmas Eve wedding?—but now she was also stealing my whole vacation. I could kiss my grand plans of sleeping until noon and spending all day watching TV in my pajamas good-bye.
“Plus, Scotland will be a real once-in-a-lifetime learning opportunity! You’ll experience a new culture. See Europe!” Pamela continued, displaying more enthusiasm than I’d seen so far.
“Mama already signed off, Dylan. It’s happening. She’s not leaving a sixteen-year-old alone for almost a month. You’re coming to Scotland.”
“But—I—I—”
It’s not like I had anything against going to Scotland. Of course not. I would have loved to go to Scotland. In a situation that in no way, shape, or form involved filming a television show.
“The network needs you, Dylan,” Pamela said. Then she added, as an afterthought, “So does your sister.”
“Get on board, little sis. Because you’re coming if I have to handcuff you to the airplane seat.”
I blanched. For all her sunny Southern-belle charm, Dusty was not above using brute force. She fought dirty. Like biting dirty. Oh God. I was trapped, wasn’t I? Totally, completely trapped. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so good.
“All right. The sister’s on board. Just give us one for the cameras, Dusty,” Pamela instructed.
“Dylan.” Dusty clasped my hands in hers. Were those actual tears shining in her eyes? She took a deep breath. “Will you be the Pippa to my Kate?”
And it was a real good thing I hadn’t swallowed those saltines, because otherwise, they would have come right back up.
Whoever thought Scotland in December would be romantic was probably deranged. Actually, considering that Dusty, clipboard Pamela, and whatever depraved minds ran TRC had cooked this spectacle up, they were definitely deranged.
I stamped my sneakers against the gravel of the parking lot, trying to get feeling back in my toes. I should have been enjoying my last few moments of precious freedom from the cameras, but I couldn’t focus on anything besides the fact that I was slowly freezing to death. Well, not that slowly. Hugging my arms tighter around myself, I watched my breath puff white clouds in the crisp air. Forty minutes. It had been forty minutes.
I pulled the TRC travel itinerary out of my jeans pocket and unfolded it, checking one more time. Yup, there it was, in Times New Roman black and white—Kit Kirby, groomsman, will pick Dylan up at the Dunkeld & Birnam train station. Here I was. At Dunkeld & Birnam. At the train station. And no Kit Kirby.
When I’d convinced Mom that she and Dusty should leave a few days before me so I could take my Spanish test, I thought I’d won the lottery. I mean, two extra days free from TRC? I’d take it. But now, I wasn’t so sure. I was pretty confident that TRC wouldn’t have left Dusty stranded at the Dunkeld & Birnam train station. Actually, “station” was a generous term. It was a platform in the middle of the woods. There was no actual station building I could wait inside to shelter myself against the elements—just a cement platform plonked down beside two solitary-looking train tracks in a copse of leafless trees, their barren brown branches scratching at the leaden sky.
“Shouldn’t there be snow?” I muttered, more to watch my breath continue puffing white than for any other reason. I wasn’t usually in the habit of talking to myself, but, well, it had been forty minutes. I was not the type of person who did well left alone with her thoughts.
“Not this year,” a male voice cheerfully responded. “Not yet, at any rate.”
“What the—” I whirled around, nearly toppling over my suitcase. How long had this apparition in a charcoal peacoat been standing behind me?
“No snow yet this year. It’s a bit brown, wouldn’t you say?” the apparition continued as I tried to regain my balance, spreading my arms out wide for leverage. “It’ll look much better once the snow comes in. Less bleak. At the moment it’s downright Brontë-esque. Brontë-ian?” He furrowed his brow, deciding. “Neither sounds right. Either way, it’s bloody Wuthering Heights: Even Farther North up here.”
“You scared me!”
“Sorry about that.” His continued cheeriness was proving extremely annoying. “I thought you knew I was there, considering you were talking to me.”
“I wasn’t—I mean I was—I mean—Are you Kit Kirby?”
“No.” He shook his head, then adjusted the striped scarf around his neck. “Sorry. Should I be?”
“Yes,” I snapped. “And you should have been Kit Kirby an hour ago.”
“Right. Terribly sorry about that.” An amused smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Haven’t quite mastered the art of identity theft as of yet. Or transfiguration. Sadly, never got my Hogwarts letter.”
I frowned at him. Not even a Harry Potter ref could distract me from my frigid state, and my annoyance with the boy who was most assuredly not Kit Kirby. Not-Kit-Kirby was tall, taller than me even, with hair so dark it was almost black and surprisingly light blue eyes. He was so pale that if I was the kind of girl who thought vampires were hot, I might have found him attractive, but I’m not. So I didn’t.
“I’ve been waiting here for almost an hour.” I hopped back and forth, trying to keep my legs from going numb. That was sort of out of nowhere, yes, but I had a vested interest in turning this conversation toward how I could get inside.
“That’s dreadful. Why didn’t you ring someone?” His brow crinkled in confusion.
“My cell phone doesn’t work over here.”
“There’s a pay phone, actually,” he said kindly, as though he were explaining something to a small, confused child. I jerked my thumb at the handwritten Out of Order sign. “Ah. Right.” He nodded swiftly. “You were waiting for Kit Kirby, you say?”
“Mmm-hmm,” I murmured, hugging myself again.
“Here for Ronan’s wedding, then, are you?”
“Yeah.” I was slightly taken aback. How did he know? “Are you Kit Kirby’s replacement? Or does the whole country know about this spectacle?”
“A bit of both, really,” he said. “Seems like all of Perth has been turned upside down.”
“Tell me about it.” I didn’t know what Perth was, but I sure felt like everything had been turned upside down since TRC came into our lives.
“Although I have to admit, I didn’t come specifically to fetch you. I was just taking a shortcut through the station when you addressed me. This is a bit of a happy coincidence.”
“Lucky me,” I muttered. “Assuming you’re not a murderer, and since you seem to know who Ronan is, do you mind giving me a ride to his estate? Where’s your car?”
“Not a murderer. Although, look at Raskolnikov. We don’t really know what we’re capable of, do we?”
“Car?” I repeated. What a weirdo. Now was not the time for Russian literature. Although honestly, was it ever the time for five hundred pages of suffering? One slog through Crime and Punishment had been more than enough for me.
“What car?”
“Your. Car,” I enunciated clearly through clenched teeth. He seemed a bit on his own planet, one where he was hanging out with wizards and Russian ax murderers.
“Oh, I haven’t got a car.” He stuck his hands in his pocket and smiled. “I’ve got a fantastic bicycle, though. Left her at home, sadly.”
“Her?”
“Mrs. Manson Mingott. She’s a real lady.”
“Oh-kay,” I sighed. “You have no car. How are we—or how am I, at least—getting to the estate?”
“Oh, that’s terribly far from here.” He shook his head sadly
.
“Of course it is,” I muttered. “Can you at least point me in the direction of somewhere warm?”
“I’ll do you one better.” He reached toward me, and I stepped back to avoid contact as his fingers closed around the handle on my suitcase. “I’ll take you there myself.”
“In what? Your nonexistent car? The handlebars of your invisible Mrs. Maggleby Marjorine bike?”
“Mrs. Manson Mingott,” he corrected me. “It’s not a far walk. Not to somewhere warm, at any rate. Town’s just down the hill there.” He started rolling my suitcase through the gravel and out of the train station’s parking lot. “You Americans.” He chuckled. “Always driving everywhere.”
“That’s more of an LA thing, actually.” I bristled. Not that I actually knew that, never having been to LA. But I read stuff. “We walk plenty in Mississippi.”
“Mississippi? You’re a friend of Dusty’s, then?”
“I’m her sister.”
“You are?” He whipped around to face me, mouth hanging open.
“Don’t look so shocked. It’s not completely impossible.”
“No—no—of course not,” he sputtered. “I didn’t mean anything by it. You’re just very…”
“Different,” I supplied. “I know.”
“Different is good,” he said simply, and in spite of myself, I was weirdly pleased by it. Dusty tended to bring out the defensive side of me—it was hard being the little sister of the most beautiful girl in Tupelo, not to mention that she had been my high school’s head cheerleader, class president, prom queen, and yearbook editor. Someday, I wanted to live in a place where I never heard “You’re Dusty’s sister?” ever again.
We turned out of the parking lot and onto the road, where the cobblestoned sidewalk was so narrow we had to walk single file, affording me a view of the back of his head and not much else. His dark hair was so close to black it glinted almost blue in the afternoon light. “I was mostly surprised because you sound nothing like Dusty. Are you sure you’re related?”
“Pretty sure. Or I’m in for a very surprising revelation on this season of Prince in Disguise.”
He smiled. “Why don’t you have an American accent?”
“I do. I just don’t have a Southern accent.”
“Well, why not?”
“I squelched it. Like a bug. Which, I see, with regards to your own accent, you have made no such effort to do.”
“Why on earth would I want to?”
“You’re practically unintelligible.”
At that, he laughed out loud. Which was nice, I guess, since I was being kind of unfairly grumpy. It wasn’t his fault that I’d been stuck outside for so long. I should have been grateful that he was taking me to town, and, presumably, somewhere warm.
“My English master at Eton would be very displeased to hear that.”
I grunted in response, since I wasn’t sure what Eton was. A school? Probably.
“What’s your name, Dusty’s mysterious sister?”
“Dylan.”
“Dylan,” he mused, like he was turning it over in his mouth. “That’s a boy’s name, isn’t it?”
“You’re a boy’s name.”
“Sorry?”
“Nothing,” I mumbled.
“I didn’t mean to offend you.” He turned to face me, and his eyes were so blue they were really disconcerting. “Dylan is a terrific name. An absolutely top-notch poet. Oof, except for that horrid Child’s Christmas in Wales. Can’t stand it. Absolutely appalling. But aside from that, he’s really not bad. You should be honored, truly.”
“Oh. Thank you.” No one had ever reacted to my name quite like that before. And I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I was pretty sure I was named after Bob Dylan, not Dylan Thomas.
“They grow them big in the States, don’t they?”
“Excuse me?”
“You and Dusty. And your mum. You’re the tallest girls I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh. Yeah. We’re pretty tall.”
I never knew what to say to that. I mean…I knew I was tall. It wasn’t a surprise.
“It’s a nice change of pace, to look a girl straight in the eyes. The women in my life seem to be positively Lilliputian. Real hobbits, all of them.”
I couldn’t get a read on this guy. Maybe it was some kind of British/American cultural divide. Historically, from my limited exposure to BBC programming, I didn’t tend to get their sense of humor.
“I’m Jamie.” He lifted the suitcase over a particularly large rift in the narrow cobblestoned sidewalk. “Since you didn’t ask.”
“Nice to meet you, Jamie. Sorry,” I apologized. “I have terrible manners.”
“As I expected. You are American, after all.”
I glowered at him, but he turned around to flash me a grin. Kidding, then. I smiled back.
“This must be that famous British humor I’ve heard so much about.”
“Ah, yes,” he sighed. “The classic deadpan sarcasm of the Commonwealth. One of our greatest cultural legacies. Although I think the coming weeks will reveal themselves to be more of a satire.”
“Not theater of the absurd?”
“Nice.” He nodded. “A fairy-tale wedding, as envisioned by Ionesco. He’d be mad for reality TV, don’t you think?”
I mmmed noncommittally. Note to self: must stop referencing major artistic movements unless extremely well informed as to the particulars of said movements. This guy had already dropped more literary references in ten minutes than my English teacher had in the past three months.
“And here I’d thought America’s only great cultural legacy was deep-frying everything.”
“Hey now,” I objected. “What about fish and chips? That’s deep-fried. And it’s, like, your national dish.”
“That’s classic. You deep-fry ghastly things.”
The cobblestoned sidewalk narrowed even more as we moved onto a bridge. I sneaked a peek over the side to see a wide river flowing lazily downstream, bare branches reflected in its dark surface. Kind of pretty, in a spare sort of way.
“Ghastly?” I smiled. Not a word I’d heard in a long time. “We deep-fry delicious things. You haven’t lived ’til you’ve had a deep-fried Reese’s.”
“I don’t think I’ve had any type of Reese’s, and I’m quite happy with the amount I’ve lived, thank you very much.”
“Really? Never had a chocolate peanut-butter cup?”
“Oh, peanut butter, bleagh.” He made an odd sound low in his throat, like a cat with a hair ball. “Why are all you Americans so obsessed with peanut butter? It’s bizarre.”
“You’ve clearly been doing peanut butter wrong.”
“There’s a right way?”
“Yes. Forget the jelly. It’s all about chocolate.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“And anyway, the deep-fried candy bar was invented in the UK. Deep-fried Mars bars. They originated at a chip shop in Scotland. So, that’s on you, actually.”
He stopped suddenly, about halfway over the bridge, and I narrowly avoided colliding with him.
“How on earth do you know that?”
“I watch a lot of Food Network,” I muttered. God, I really needed to stop watching so much TV. Although that little tidbit had come in handy. So one point for TV, then.
“Fascinating,” he murmured. “And welcome to Dunkeld,” he added at a normal volume.
I followed the sweep of his arm to see a small town nestled at the bottom of a valley. Once I got over my initial embarrassment at how close the town was to the station—I could easily have found it if I’d ventured thirty yards from the train platform—I was somewhat caught off guard by its cuteness. The whole place was adorable. Small buildings with thatched roofs and wooden doors lined the narrow cobblestoned streets. Soft gray curls of smoke puffed out of squat, round chimneys into the pale blue sky.
“It’s lovely,” I said softly, in a voice that didn’t sound anything like mine.
&nb
sp; “It’s really not bad. Rather nice place for the Dunleavy seat.”
“Yeah, Ronan was lucky to grow up here,” I said somewhat wistfully. Not that I had anything against downtown Tupelo. But it sure didn’t look like this. “Are you from here, too?”
“Me? No, of course not,” he scoffed. “I’m from Bakewell. It’s about three hours north of London.”
“So you’re not Scottish?”
“No, English.” He seemed surprised. “I thought you knew. The accent. And the fact that you said my national dish was fish and chips. Not haggis.”
“Oh. Um, well, I knew you sounded different from Ronan. I just didn’t really…think about it,” I finished lamely. Since Jamie was involved with the wedding, I just sort of assumed they were from the same place. I mean, all of my friends were from Tupelo.
“Quite all right. I doubt I could discern a Mississippian from an Alabaman when push came to shove.” He turned to face me. “Good Lord, your lips.”
“My—my—what?!” I squeaked.
“Your lips.” He leaned closer. Where was he going? I was frozen, and not because of the cold. “My God, they’re positively blue.”
“Oh…yeah. Well, I told you I was cold,” I said defensively. Not that I thought he had just been captivated by my lips. Although maybe my lips were captivating. I’d never given them much thought before. But the fact that they had, as of yet, failed to captivate anyone, would lead me to conclude that they weren’t.
“We need to get you inside, by the fire, preferably with tea, as soon as is humanly possible. To the Atholl Arms!” He took off running, somehow managing to drag my suitcase behind him.
“The Atholl Arms?” I blurted out in disbelief, spirits lifting as my lungs expanded and I broke into a run, all of my half-eaten plane snacks rattling in my backpack as it bounced. There was always something about those first few steps of a run, as my arms pumped and my feet left the pavement, that made it impossible not to smile.
“Yes, it sounds a bit like arsehole, doesn’t it?” he yelled behind him as he thundered down the hill into town. I caught up with him easily but stayed a few paces behind to follow him. He didn’t have the stride of a seasoned runner, but his legs were so long that he was covering quite a bit of ground rather quickly. Especially for someone in corduroys who was rolling a fairly large suitcase behind him. “No relation, I’m sure. Although I hear the first Duke of Atholl was a bit of a wanker.”
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