The moon went behind a cloud, casting the woods deeper into darkness. I tried to wiggle my toes experimentally, but I couldn’t feel them at all. This was so, so much worse than being stranded at the Dunkeld & Birnam train station. I hadn’t known it was possible to be so cold it was painful. I tried to think of August in Tupelo, of the kind of heat that shimmered on sidewalks and melted ice-cream cones before you could eat them. But all I could see was darkness and all I could feel was cold. I braced myself against another round of shivers, listening to the jarring sound of my teeth chattering.
The first thing I heard was the hoofbeats. The second was my name being shouted. The third thing was a lot of snorting, and then an absolutely enormous black stallion appeared in front of me, air bursting from his nostrils in white clouds.
“Dylan!” Jamie cried, pulling on the reins to bring the horse to a stop, the large hooves skidding in the dirt before my feet. Jamie did look rather dashing riding bareback, his dark hair shining in the moonlight, his kilt flapping in the breeze, but I was not in the mood for dashing. Or for a kilt, for that matter. I’d seen enough tartan in the past couple of weeks to last me a lifetime.
This was ridiculous. This was not real life. I blinked a few times, but Jamie and the horse remained firmly in place.
“I’m not Jane Eyre!” I shouted.
“Sorry?” He blinked somewhat owlishly a few times.
“I’m not Jane Eyre!” I repeated. “You can’t Mr. Rochester your way out of everything!”
“Prior to this moment, I have never attempted to Mr. Rochester my way out of anything,” he said, baffled. “I have neither dressed up as a fortune-teller to ascertain your intentions nor blinded myself in a fire. This very incident hardly qualifies as Mr. Rochester-ing, since I am still firmly atop my horse. And I’m not entirely sure that gentleman’s name can be used as a verb.”
“In America you can use anything as a verb!” I retorted shrilly, scrambling to my feet. “You can verb whatever you want! Thank the goddamn Smurfs for that!”
“I believe the Smurfs are Belgian, originally.”
“You’re Belgian! Originally!” I was aware that I had long since bypassed the realm of the rational, but I really didn’t care. My legs were practically buckling underneath me, knees knocking with each fresh wave of shivers.
“Distantly, on my mother’s side, as a matter of fact. But not since the fourteenth century. I believe it was called the Burgundian Netherlands in those days, however.”
I raised my hands heavenward in the kind of epic shrug any mention of the Burgundian Netherlands justly deserved.
Jamie slid gracefully from the back of the horse.
“Just go.” I backed away from him, closer to the tree. “Go back to the castle, okay? I’m fine.”
He walked toward me. The horse, for his part, started snuffling about in the snow, presumably looking for some probably long-dead grass.
“You’re not fine.”
My bottom lip wobbled dangerously. Or maybe it was just disturbed by the force of my teeth chattering. I looked away, focusing on a whorl in a nearby tree trunk.
“Let me take you back to Dunyvaig, Dylan.” He reached out a hand, slowly, gently, like I was a wild animal he was scared of spooking. “It’s freezing out here. You can’t stay out long. It isn’t safe. You’re shivering uncontrollably.”
“Is saving people from hypothermia some kind of, like, life goal you have? You seem to do this a lot.”
“Just with you, really.”
His hand touched my cheek tentatively. I closed my eyes and leaned into it, the warmth of his palm cradling my face. It burned, almost, against the bitter cold of my skin.
“I don’t want to go back,” I whispered.
“I know. But unfortunately staying here isn’t an option. You’ll freeze to death. Better to be alive and in a socially awkward situation than dead and free.”
“That’s really inspirational. And seems very British. Is that how you guys tried to deal with George Washington?”
“I’m not entirely sure whether or not I should be offended. That seemed like a slight to the crown.” He slid his tartan sash thing off, unpinning the heavy silver buckle that held it together, and shook it out. It was bigger than I expected. He wrapped it around my shoulders, bundling me up like a burrito. I was still shivering but felt much better wrapped up.
“Can we go hide in the horse barn?” I pleaded. “Just hide in there and bar the doors?”
“They’d find us eventually.”
“Eventually is better than right now.”
Headlights broke through the darkness. I buried my face in the tartan, seeing spots. The horse whinnied in alarm. Jamie grabbed his bridle, making soothing noises as the horse stamped the frosty ground warily. The horn blared, and the horse tossed his head in response. Jamie grabbed his muzzle and blew onto his nose, stroking the sides of his face.
My eyes adjusted to the light in time to see a shiny vintage convertible roll to a stop, a fur-covered lump in the driver’s seat barely visible.
“Dylan!” Heaven. I recognized her voice at once. “The cavalry is here!”
“Why does everyone think I need to be rescued by means of some completely impractical mode of transportation?” I asked no one in particular. The horse nickered in response. He got it.
Heaven left the car running, headlights still on, and hopped out. She was wearing a thick fur coat that fell all the way down to her ankles.
“Why are you driving a convertible in December?” It wasn’t the only question I had. But it was the first one that came to mind.
“I couldn’t figure out how to get the top up on this stupid thing! It’s from like the Paleolithic Period!”
“It’s from 1966,” Jamie answered.
“Is it yours?” I asked, boggling.
“Heavens, no. Look at the personalized registration.”
I looked, attempting to shield my eyes from the glare of the headlights. The plate read KIRBY1.
“You stole Kit Kirby’s car?” I asked incredulously.
“I didn’t steal it on purpose. It was around back, and the keys were in it. I had to make sure you were okay. And there was no way I was running out here. I could never catch you.”
There was something special about a friend who would steal a car for you.
“And the fur coat…” I prompted.
“Pulled it out of a coat closet. In case you didn’t notice, it’s December.” She looked pointedly at my bare knees. “Heat’s running, but it’s not doing much. So let’s jump in and get back to Dunyvaig before we all freeze our butts off, ’kay?”
I looked back and forth between the two of them, the friends who had ridden to my rescue. Who had come to find me in a dark forest and weren’t pressuring me to talk about my dad or why I had run or anything. They just wanted me to be warm and safe. And maybe this was part of the mental confusion of early-onset hypothermia, but I had never felt so lucky. Who cared if my dad didn’t recognize me? I had family. And friends. They knew who I was—and so did I.
Another set of headlights cut through the darkness as a white van barreled into the clearing. Once again, Jamie restrained the horse as he shied and whinnied in displeasure.
“Stop! Thief!” An incredibly angry Kit Kirby burst out of the van, coat flapping behind him like the wings of the angel of death. “Unhand the keys, you madwoman!”
It wasn’t Kit Kirby who scared me, however. It was Pamela behind him, her hands clutching the clipboard as she watched the cameraman advance toward us, a grin on her face so wide I thought her face might split in two.
The following afternoon, I had stopped shivering but couldn’t seem to shake the cold feeling. Or maybe that was just because I was trapped in a room with Pamela. Balanced precariously on my knees, a teacup rattled in its saucer.
“So.” Pamela took a loud, surprisingly slurpy sip, then set her cup decisively back in its saucer. “Here we are. All alone. Just you and me.”
I
narrowed my eyes and attempted to sip some tea. Hot. Too hot. A bit of scalding liquid sloshed over the side as I set the whole dangerous business down on the coffee table.
“I must admit, I was pretty surprised when I heard you wanted to have a little chat.”
I looked at her. Yes, sitting down with Pamela had been my idea, but that didn’t make being here any easier. The way I saw it, I didn’t have much of a choice. Pamela needed to be kept distracted and as far away from my sister’s burgeoning belly as humanly possible. And if that distraction was me, well, fine.
“Let’s just clear up a few things before you film your first confessional.”
“Confessional?” I spat.
“Do you know what that is?”
“Yeah, I know what that is,” I snarled. “I watch a lot of TV. I just don’t know why you’d want to film me talking to the camera.”
“Everyone else has filmed a confessional. Most people have already filmed several. Dusty and Ronan do at least one a day, usually more.”
“Makes sense. It’s their show, right? No one is watching this thing to see me.”
She fixed me with a stare.
Then Pamela sighed heavily, breaking the silence. “You know, Dylan, I’ve given you a lot of leeway. A lot.”
“Oh, have you?” I asked sarcastically.
“Yes. I have, actually,” she replied. “You made it very clear that you didn’t wish to be a large part of this show. I respected that. I haven’t asked you to film any confessionals prior to this. I’ve kept the camera crews as unobtrusive as possible.”
I snorted. That was unobtrusive? Please.
“We have a problem, Dylan.”
“We? There is no we. I don’t have a problem.” I crossed my arms defensively.
“Fine. I have a problem. And my problem is you.”
I tried to fix her with my coldest stare. It made zero impact.
“You need to stop running away, Dylan.”
“I haven’t run away,” I shot back. “I’m on the cross-country team. I run. It’s something I like to do. Exercise.”
The look she gave me informed me very clearly that she was buying none of my bullshit.
“Last night had nothing to do with aerobic activity. You can’t run away from the cameras. You can’t hide from the cameras. You can’t lock yourself in the bathroom and shut out the cameras.”
“Don’t I get any privacy? It’s a bathroom.”
“If you’re doing your business, sure. If you’re in there with someone else having a conversation, then no. I thought you’d appreciate the fact that I only sent one crew member along on your date. You know what? We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here.” She waved her hands like she was trying to erase the last few minutes. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” I parroted in disbelief.
“Yes, sorry. Really, Dylan, I should be thanking you.”
“For what?” I asked suspiciously.
“For Jamie, Dylan! Obviously.” She laughed. “That was a really nice, very unexpected development. I honestly had no idea that would happen.” She looked off into the distance, like she was visualizing something just out of sight. “That’s going to be some excellent television. I expected absolutely nothing from you, and you’ve given us a great B story line.”
I scuffed my sneaker on the carpet. Of course I was happy that I’d met Jamie, and that he’d kissed me, but I wished I hadn’t given Pamela anything. My whole body recoiled at the idea of everyone watching me and Jamie on TV. I’d have to go on some kind of TV-smashing campaign all over Tupelo. And never look at the Internet ever again.
“Of course, single teenage boy, single teenage girl…I probably should have expected something to happen, hmm?” She narrowed her eyes. “It’s just that the way Dusty described you, I didn’t think romance was a possibility.”
Ouch. Well, she wanted me to talk about Dusty, did she? I clamped my lips together firmly.
“It must be hard, having a sister who is just so beautiful.” She tilted her head to the side sympathetically, adopting what looked like a well-practiced I’m listening face. “Can’t have been easy, growing up the younger sister of the most beautiful girl in Mississippi.”
I looked over her shoulder. A cameraman had entered the small sitting room, closing the door quietly behind him.
“So I guess private time is over then?” I asked archly.
“I think so,” she said. “We understand each other, don’t we? Run away again and I’ll slap your mother with a contract-violation lawsuit so crippling she’ll have to mortgage your home just to pay the lawyer’s retainer.”
“What—You can’t—”
“Of course I can. You’d know that if you’d bothered to read any of the contracts.” She tsked. “So. Let’s play nice, shall we? I got you a boyfriend—you’re welcome—and you got me a B line—thank you—so it looks to me like we’re even. Stay where the cameras can see you for the rest of your time at Dunyvaig. It’s not so much longer to go. Shouldn’t be hard. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said through gritted teeth. I didn’t know nearly enough about contract law to call her bluff. If this was a bluff.
“Now, isn’t it better when we’re all friendly?”
I bared my teeth in a ghoulish approximation of a smile.
“There you go. We needed this B line, honestly,” she said, almost absentmindedly. “There’s only so much mileage you can get out of the American bride who keeps puking up her Scots fiancé’s haggis. It was funny the first time, but she’s going to have to keep it down at the wedding.”
Puking up the haggis. My eyes snapped over to Pamela. Was she baiting me? She seemed unconcerned as she took another sip of her tea. It was possible she hadn’t figured anything out yet…but if she hadn’t, she was very, very close. I had to do something—throw her off the scent—anything. Otherwise Dusty’s marriage, her life, her future, the baby—all of it—was toast.
“What if I wanted to be more than the B line?”
“Excuse me?”
I couldn’t tell who was more shocked that I’d just said that—me or Pamela.
“I want to be more than the B line,” I repeated, trying to sound like I meant it. “Me—me and Jamie, I mean. You can film us anywhere. All our dates. And I’ll do the confessionals. I’ll do one right now.”
“This is a rather abrupt change of heart.” She set her cup back in the saucer and eyed me warily.
“You—you were right before.” The more time the cameras spent with me and Jamie, the less Pamela would be poking around in Dusty’s business. I just had to make her believe this was what I really wanted. “About how hard it is, being Dusty’s younger sister. How no one ever thinks I’m beautiful. How when Dusty’s in the room, I’m invisible.”
“Yes,” Pamela purred, “that must be hard.”
“So I want my own story line. One that’s just about me. Not Dusty at all. Okay?” It seemed like she was kind of buying it. Or maybe my motivation didn’t matter to her, as long as she got her footage. After all, I was giving her exactly what she wanted.
“Okay, Dylan. I’m glad we finally understand each other.” I hated when Pamela smiled at me. It freaked me out. “Mike will check in with you later to film confessional stuff about Jamie and we can add it in post. If you want this story line to go anywhere, you cannot hold back on the romance. Please spare no details. Understood?”
I nodded. The idea of having to recount, in detail, every experience I’d had with Jamie made me want to hide in a cave for the rest of my life, but for Dusty and the baby, I could do it. I had to.
“But there’s a few questions I’d like to ask you myself. The sudden reappearance of your father last night must have been quite a shock.”
I wanted to play along with Pamela, for Dusty’s sake, but I didn’t want to think about him. I didn’t want to talk about him. I wanted to pretend he didn’t exist. That he’d never walked into Dunyvaig at all.
“How did that make you feel, Dylan?�
�� Pamela prompted.
“Nothing,” I whispered.
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
“Nothing,” I repeated. “I felt nothing.”
Pamela narrowed her eyes at me. I knew I wasn’t giving her what she wanted. But I wasn’t lying, exactly. I felt a hollowness that I couldn’t put into words. “Nothing” was the only word I could think of to describe it.
“You must have been surprised.”
“Obviously I was surprised,” I snapped. “Exactly what you wanted, right? The dramatic return of the absent father. That must have been a real find for you. How long did it take you to track him down?”
Play along, Dylan. You’re supposed to be playing along. Why was that so hard?
“And why, exactly, was us finding Cash a problem?” She paused as I tried to think of an answer to her question that wasn’t combative. “I don’t understand why you think us bringing him to Scotland was some sort of plot. Typically girls want their fathers at their weddings.”
Yeah, right. Bringing Cash in had everything to do with shock value and ratings and nothing whatsoever to do with Dusty’s wedding.
“You know how much this means to your sister. Surely, Dylan, you must have seen the episode where Dusty told Ronan about your dad.”
I had, in fact. It was the fourth episode that aired, and the first one where Dusty and Ronan got “real,” or whatever passes for real on reality TV. Dusty had pulled out a picture of herself, tiny with a pouf of white-blond hair blowing in the wind, holding the hand of a tall blond guy in jeans—a picture I hadn’t even known she’d had. She cried, then Ronan cried, and they bonded over the fact that they’d both grown up without fathers. Later, Ronan told Jimmy Kimmel that this had been the moment he knew he was falling in love with her. #FindDustysDad had even been trending on Twitter for a while. Odd that Cash hadn’t outed himself then. Maybe he’d been waiting for a free plane ticket to Europe.
Prince in Disguise Page 16