“No!” Lissa practically shrieked. “I was kidding, you loon.”
“That dress would be spoiled if you put jewelry with it, anyway,” Carly told her. “But I would updo your hair and put Alasdair’s thistle pin in it. It would be a nice compliment.”
With a sly glance at me, Lissa murmured, “Okay. It’s probably safe to do that… now.”
“If you only knew.” I ran the zipper up the back of Carly’s completely stunning gown that had to be her own design. “Mi’ja, tell me you didn’t make this in your spare time.”
“I did, actually.” She grinned at my appalling Spanish over her shoulder, then frowned down at her chest. “I’m still not sure about the draping in the front, though. The crisscrossed bandage look is so last fall.”
“Uh-huh. It reminds the world you have cleavage, girlfriend. Don’t knock it. I’m wearing opera gloves. Do you want my other pair?”
“Ooh! Yes, please.”
“So what was that supposed to mean, Mac, what you just said?” Lissa asked.
“What, about Carly’s cleavage?”
“No, silly. About Alasdair.” Lissa poured Gillian into a little confection that had to be Tori Wu. Who else could take the Betsey Johnson mini-prom-dress look and cross it with a cheongsam and have it come out quite like that?
“Gillian, that dress is amazing,” I said. “How are you going to do your hair?”
“I’ll tell you as soon as you spill about Alasdair. What’s going on with him?”
“Absolutely nothing.” I handed Carly my second pair of gloves out of the bureau and began pulling on my own. “He doesn’t seem to get that I want to be more than just friends. Or rather, he gets it. He just has a million reasons why it’s a bad idea.”
“Have you talked about it?” Gillian asked.
“Yes. Which is why I know about the million reasons. Like, I’m rich and he’s poor. Which, as Mummy has told me, is no longer as true as it used to be. And the age difference. And the fact that he’s Gabe’s guest.”
“Which has what to do with it?” Lissa wondered.
“Blah, blah, blah,” I finished. “I appreciate you lot angling to give us time together. Not that it did a bit of good.”
“It must have done some good, if you’re friends,” Shani put in. “I mean, I know that’s not what you want, but it’s something.”
“Does Rashid consider you a friend now after you turned him down?” I asked her.
“Yes. I mean, it’s not like we’re eating lunches together all the time, but it’s all cool between us. And I know him a lot better than I did before, since he’s not trying to impress me all the time. He’s just… himself.”
“Careful,” Carly said with a smile. “You might fall for him all over again.”
“I think Danyel would have something to say about that,” Lissa said. “And of the two, I think he’d wear better in the wash, you know? Hey, do you want help with your hair?”
“Not me.” Shani scooped her hair up and wound it round one hand. “What do you think of the sixties pouf?”
“With your cheekbones, it’d be perfect,” I said.
Hair always takes the longest. Mine was basically done, and as all of us knew, Shani could produce amazing do’s in the dark with one hand tied behind her back. That left Lissa’s updo, Carly’s curls, and Gillian’s razor-sharp angled bob, which just needed some sheen and a brush-out.
The clock chimed eight and we looked at one another.
“We are so hot,” Lissa said without a trace of smugness. She was just reporting the truth.
“Smart, too. We can dance Strip the Willow,” Gillian added.
“Come on, girls.” I ushered them out of my room and toward the upstairs balcony. “Let me show you how to make an entrance.”
THIS BEING THE COUNTRY, people had made an effort to arrive on the tick of the dot, which meant the entry hall was a crush when we appeared at the top of the stairs.
Dad, dressed in full tartan kit, and Mummy, in the diamonds and Emanuel Ungaro couture, stood near the door, greeting people as they came in. I caught Dad’s eye and raised my eyebrows in a meaningful look.
“Friends, neighbors,” he called over the buzz of the crowd, “please join me in welcoming our daughter, Lindsay, and her friends Shani Hanna—” I gave Shani a gentle shove in the small of her back to get her moving down the stairs. “—Lissa Mansfield, Gillian Chang, and Carolina Aragon.”
One by one, as he called their names, my friends floated down the grand circular staircase like the stars they were. I brought up the end of the procession, and Dad met me at the foot of the stairs with a hug.
“Wasn’t too theatrical, was it?” he whispered anxiously in my ear.
“It was perfect. Saves so much time in introductions later, too.”
I plunged into the crowd to be kissed and exclaimed over, and to have my gloved hand shaken again and again. Even Carrie, dressed in a purple strapless confection that I swear had come from an eighties consignment shop, managed to remember she was in polite company, and we air kissed as if we were still friends. My grannie, who was seventy and dressed like me in a bottle-green ceilidh gown and her MacPhail hunting earasaid, practically crushed the breath from me with her hug.
“I heard about this hotel plan,” she whispered fiercely.
Oh, dear. “Gran, I—”
“Dinna fash yerself, lassie. I think it’s a wonderful idea, and our Graham had best get that through his thick skull or lose the place altogether. I’ll not have it passing out of MacPhail hands. I will not.”
“Wow, Grannie.” Not for nothing had the Dowager Countess spent several seasons as a lady-in-waiting at Buckingham Palace. “Has Mummy been talking to you?”
She made a sound like whssht. “I can see through a grinding stone with a hole in it, even if he cannot. You leave my son to me.”
Poor Dad. With all his women rallied against him, he didn’t stand a chance.
I don’t think I’d consciously been praying about the hotel plan or anything. As you can tell, I’m not very good at praying. But all the same, someone had dragged in support from the place I’d least expected it. With a strange feeling of relief, I struck that problem off my mental to-do list and left it to my formidable grandmother.
It was time to join my friends in the ballroom and get this party started.
TEXT MESSAGE
Zuleikha We have arrived.
Rashid Mother, I beg you, do not do this.
Zuleikha Your father is resolved. We await the helicopter’s return.
Rashid I am convinced it is all a misunderstanding or a joke.
Zuleikha I am not in a joking mood. It is too cold here for humor.
Rashid I counsel patience. At least we could have sent an envoy from the Yasiri embassy.
Zuleikha Your father’s rage knows no bounds. He is determined to have it out with this girl.
Rashid As he wills, so we must do.
THE LOVELY THING about throwing parties at Strathcairn is that I know everyone. There must have been more than two hundred people in the ballroom, and they all turned to face the doors as my parents made their entrance.
Together. For the first time in years.
The DJ—who was all we could get since I’d made good and sure Blue Bella had been uninvited—put on “Brown-Eyed Girl.” Sure, it’s the chestnut of all chestnuts, but I happen to know it’s also the song that was playing the very first time Dad ever asked Mummy to dance. To my utter delight, he turned to her and swung her onto the floor without even asking—and to top it off, she went without a word of protest.
The room buzzed with astonishment and speculation, but my parents behaved as though they didn’t hear it. In fact, it looked suspiciously as though they had eyes and ears only for each other.
I pressed my hands to the front of my dress to keep from rubbing them together in glee. I’d stolen an entire thirty minutes out of this crazy busy day to put together that playlist, and the DJ had been threatened with
dismemberment if he deviated from it. I had the latest off the Billboard list, as well as oldies, standards, and even, yes, the country dances that Dad and everyone over fifty expected.
No one would ever be able to say I wasn’t as good a hostess as my mother. Though I’d give her full credit for helping.
By the third song the party had the feeling of success. You know, when you’ve circulated enough to see that people are happy and talking up a storm, greeting those they haven’t seen for a while, gossiping their hearts out, and dancing.
Then the DJ called, “Strip the Willow.”
As people formed sets during the first familiar notes, Alasdair materialized beside me. “May I have this one?”
“You may.” He took my hand, and when I saw the direction he was going, I tugged at his. “I’m the hostess,” I explained in a rush. “I have to lead the top set.”
“I suppose I’d best remember the steps, then. Though you look so beautiful, it’ll be hard to concentrate.”
I took my place and stared at him across the set. “Th—thank you.”
And then the pattern began and I had to drag my brain into the dance by brute force instead of falling to bits with a goofy smile on my face. In between turns I saw that Lissa and Carly were in one set with a sour-faced Kirsten MacDonald, who would probably be Carrie’s BFF now that I was out of the picture, and Lily. Shani, who seemed to have got Terrell for a partner, was in another set with Carrie. Lovely. I wouldn’t put it past her to put a kink in the steps on purpose to make Shani miss a pattern. I couldn’t see Gillian anywhere.
And then the dance consumed me, and I realized two things.
I was having fun whirling and turning and running. And Alasdair not only hadn’t forgotten the steps, but he was a really good dancer. Which he proceeded to prove over the next dance, a sixties twist, and the next one, an indie house beat that made everyone over thirty head for the refreshment tables. Heh. All the more room for us to break loose.
Half an hour later, I headed there myself, only to find Alasdair there ahead of me, ladling punch for one of the Honourables from Aberdeen to whom I was distantly related.
“You’ll have all the old ladies pinching your cheek and calling you a good boy,” I told him, nicking a glass of punch for myself. Circles of thinly sliced orange floated in the ruby liquid and bumped my upper lip as I drank.
“They’re sweet old ducks,” he replied, strolling next to me toward the French doors onto the lawn. They weren’t open, of course, because the air coming in would have been glacial, but the potted palms gave us the illusion of privacy. “Relations, I take it?”
“Yes. Connected to my cousin Roger somehow. Dad would know how, exactly.”
“And why,” he asked, “are we talking about old ladies?”
“Would you rather talk about young ones?” I retorted with a smile.
“Yes. In fact, there’s one in particular I’m very interested in—”
“Mac!” Carrie rushed up. “Hi, Alasdair. Remember me? From the Cairn and Crown? Probably not. Mac’s good at keeping the boys to herself.”
“Carrie. How lovely to see you.” He sounded much more polite than I would have been.
“That doesn’t stop her from talking about you all the time, though.”
Right. She made me sound like a giddy thirteen-year-old. I wanted to drop through the floor. Thank goodness I hadn’t sent all those clips of him to her after all. Of course, the clip I’d sent had done its own kind of damage, but at least this moment was only minimally embarrassing. It could have been so much worse.
“All of it good, I hope.”
How could he stay so polite? Go on, Carrie. You’ve had your eyeful, now leave. Can’t you see we were having a private conversation?
“You’ve no idea.” Her knowing tone hinted that I’d bared my secret fantasies about him to her. Which I had not. I’d barely admitted them to myself. Who would tell her anything now, anyway? You may as well announce your deepest secrets on the front page of the Times.
“Oh, look, there’s Sir David Drummond.” I took Alasdair’s arm. “He and Dad are on the local conservancy board. Let me introduce you.”
I dragged him in Sir David’s direction. “Conservancy?” he murmured. “Deeply fascinating. Thanks.”
“I had to get you away from her,” I murmured. “Just so you know, I haven’t told her anything about… anything. All that’s over now.”
Sir David stood by the next set of French doors, talking with the chemist from the village, which is why I heard the noise as we walked up.
Or rather, felt the noise.
A deep, rumbling vibration that had nothing to do with the thump of the music beat under my feet. The panes of glass in the French door began to rattle. Softly at first, then harder, and then I wondered if they’d shake right out of their frames.
“What on earth—?”
“Earthquake!” I heard Lissa say in a pause in the music.
I leaped at the doors and wrenched them open to see a huge black helicopter hovering over the snow-covered lawn. As it dropped gently to the ground, even the DJ abandoned his post to rush to the windows to stare. People spilled out onto the terrace, stepping in inches of snow.
“Dad!” I shrieked. “Dad, come quick!”
“Right here.” With Mummy on one side and Dad on the other, we stood in the beating rush of freezing cold air from the whirling vanes of the chopper. My skirts plastered themselves against my legs, but I held my ground. Then a door opened and two men in black suits with black wool overcoats jumped out.
Ducking under the vanes, they pressed their coats closed in the manner of spies in hundreds of movies. To conceal what they wore in shoulder holsters underneath.
“Well, it’s not search and rescue,” Dad commented.
“Didn’t they know there’s parking along the drive?” Alasdair quipped from behind me, and Dad chuckled.
The two men mounted the stairs, not pausing until they reached the top. I stared at their no-nonsense profiles, eyes as sharp as those of Farrouk and Bashir. And suddenly I knew.
“Ohmigosh,” I whispered. “Dad. I think it’s—they’re from—”
The pilot shut down his bird, removed his helmet, and waited in his seat while the huge vanes slowed.
“Who is in charge here?” the tallest of the two asked the crowd in general.
Dad stepped forward. “I am the Earl of Strathcairn. This is my home.” I would have added, And I’d appreciate it if you’d remove your helicopter from my lawn. But nobody asked me.
The agents inclined their heads. The taller one seemed to be the spokesman, because he did the talking. “We have come at the command of Their Serene Highnesses, the Sheikh and Queen Zuleikha of Yasir.” He paused, as if Dad was supposed to genuflect or something. When he did not, the agent went on, “Their Highnesses have been informed that the young woman who has had the effrontery to declare herself the wife of His Royal Highness Prince Rashid of Yasir is a guest in your home. You will produce her without delay so that we may take her to Their Highnesses in Edinburgh, where she will answer for this lie in person.”
chapter 19
ONE STEP to the side and back put Mummy between me and the agents, and I looked over my shoulder. In a tight spot, there was only one person I wanted with me. Carly’s wide-lashed brown gaze locked with mine.
Get Shani out of here. Stat.
Without a word, she turned and pushed through the crowd. No one wasted a single look on her—they were all watching the Men in Black as though they were the biggest entertainment they’d seen all year. Of course, this was the country. It wasn’t like the soccer field at Spencer, where choppers landed fairly regularly, especially at the start of term.
Within a few seconds, I’d made my way back through the crowd and stepped through the French doors into the ballroom. The older folks had decided it was too cold for scandal and were trickling back in. I didn’t have much time. If the Yasiri agents were anything like Farrouk and Bashir
, it was too much to hope that they’d just go away. They’d carry out the sheikh’s orders or die trying.
Literally.
Our only hope was to make Shani impossible to find. Which was where I came in.
I scanned the ballroom in a panic, my skin under my earasaid prickling with the feeling that one of those guns was about to be pointed between my shoulder blades. I had seconds to find them. Maybe less.
“Mac!” Carly appeared from behind a towering arrangement of apples on the buffet table.
I grabbed handfuls of skirt and ran across the floor. “Where is she?”
“Outside in the hall.”
“Come on. We have to be quick.”
We dashed out of the ballroom and found Shani looking bewildered on the settee under the curve of the stairs. “What’s going on, girlfriends?”
“The Yasiri Secret Service are here for you.”
The blood drained out of her face. “I didn’t do anything. What do they want me for?”
“It’s to do with that wretched video. The Sheikh has his knickers in a twist and they want to fly you to Edinburgh to—I don’t know, be shouted at. Best case.”
“What’s worst case?” Shani’s lips trembled.
“Mac,” Carly pleaded, her gaze riveted on the door. “They’re reaching critical mass in there and your dad just came back into the ballroom.”
“Of all times to be a gentleman. He’s going to let them in.” I grabbed their arms and dragged them up the staircase. “Here’s what we have to do. Carly, clean up Shani’s half of her and Gillian’s room. Make it look like she was never there.”
“I’ll take her clothes upstairs and stash them in with the old clothes on the third floor.”
“Good thinking.” We pounded up the last of the stairs and dashed down the corridor toward the bedrooms. “Shani, come with me.”
“Where?”
“This place has been here for five centuries. Don’t you think we MacPhails have had to hide people once or twice before?”
“You mean secret passageways?” Carly’s eyes lit up as she hovered in the corridor with us. “Real ones? Where are they?”
Tidings of Great Boys Page 17