Swept off Her Feet (24 page)

There was a whistling intake of breath from Max as he weighed the advantages to himself. A Chippendale table versus a weekend of selling my photograph frames in the shop. Alone.

For once, I felt in a position of some power.

“And they don’t mind you staying?” he asked suspiciously.

“Not at all. In fact,” I added, unable to resist, “I’ve been invited to a ball in the house.”

“You’ve—Why?” Max spluttered, outraged at having been overtaken on the social ladder. “Is it because you’ve just told them what they’re sitting on? Is that it?”

“No!” I protested. “I haven’t told them anything yet. I was waiting for confirmation from you before I got their hopes up. They’re—”

I stopped myself. Max didn’t need to know how much I now wanted Duncan and Ingrid to keep their home. It wasn’t very loyal to my boss, but then, he wasn’t a very loyal man himself.

“Fine,” he said. “But make sure you introduce yourself to anyone who looks like they might have a house full of priceless furniture going unappreciated.”

“Naturally,” I said. “And if you get any battle reenactors in at the weekend, looking to stock up on swords and small cannon, tell them we can do wholesale.”

I slipped back into the house, stamping the snow off my boots at the front door beneath the disapproving gaze of a stuffed elk.

Elk apart, I was slightly disappointed not to find anyone in the hall. I was bubbling with eagerness to tell someone—anyone—what an amazing thing I’d found, and through a notebook no one had seen for nearly a hundred years. If it hadn’t been for me making Robert look in that room, and Violet making that note, how would we have known exactly how special the table was?

I couldn’t resist going back to the dining room to see if the table felt different to me now that Max had confirmed it was worth squillions. I positively waltzed down the corridor, raising my eyebrows in conspiracy with the bearded Victorian McAndrews along the wall—who must have known too! And then not told anyone.

I’d barged into the dining room, lost in my own vision of Donaldina instructing the famous Mr. Chippendale about table settings, before I noticed that there was someone in there already: Ingrid.

“Oh, sorry,” I said, taking in the calculator, the papers, the coffee—not on a coaster!—and her bent head, propped in her hands. “Shall I . . . ?”

“No, don’t worry,” she said, sweeping up the papers. Not quickly enough for me to miss the red final-demand type on all of them. “This is the only table big enough for our accounts.” She grimaced. “Never marry a man who still adds up in pre-decimal currency, Evie.”

It was a surprise to realize that Ingrid—fragile, birdlike Ingrid—was the family accountant; but maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing, given Duncan’s preoccupation with home
brew and history. Her stressed air obviously wasn’t just down to Janet Learmont’s social etiquette lessons.

“Are things . . . ?” I didn’t want to pry, but she was hardly hiding the evidence. “Bad?”

Ingrid started to demur, then nodded sadly. “Numbers this big actually stop meaning anything. Maybe selling to a developer isn’t such a bad option. I keep trying to tell Duncan, ‘Enjoy this ball, it could be the last one,’ but he just smiles and says something’ll turn up: ‘The family won’t let us down.’ “ She pulled a
Grrr
face, then looked exhausted. “It was all right for
the family
. Coal only cost a penny a ton in those days and you had all the maids you could manage queuing up in Ren-nick.”

Robert had seemed so furious at the prospect of the house swallowing up his parents and all their money; he didn’t seem so unreasonable now. But why wasn’t
he
worrying about this? He was better equipped to sort this out than Ingrid.

“I’m sure it will work out,” I said fervently, before I had time to think. “I’m
very sure
there’s something
extremely
valuable here.”

Ingrid looked up at me, a faint light in her eyes. “Are you . . . ?”

I nodded. “I can’t say more at this stage, but not a million miles away.”

“Oh!” She glanced down and put her fingertips on the table. “Oh.”

“Sorry, but . . .” I moved a council tax bill and put her coffee mug on top of it.

“Oops, yes. Oh!” said Ingrid, her expression brightening. “Speaking of the ball, I meant to come and find you—Robert’s organizing another practice for you down at the lodge. Just the
youngsters, you’ll be pleased to hear—Fraser, and Dougie and Kirstie, and Catriona, of course.” She smiled and nodded. “She’ll be doing the teaching, I expect; she’s been reeling for years.”

“Robert arranged a practice—for me?” I felt the blush creeping up my face.

“Mmm. Last night, while you were getting your coat, Catriona suggested her sister, Laura, might step in to dance with Fraser, just for that first dance, and Robert wouldn’t hear of it. Wouldn’t even let her finish.”

She glanced over her shoulder, clearly expecting Janet to drop from the chandelier
Mission: Impossible
–style. “Between you and me, Janet’s trying to do some not-so-subtle matchmaking for Laura. She’d like her to settle down with a nice man like Fraser. Mums, eh?” she added, thinking my dazed expression was over the maternal interfering. “I expect yours is just as bad.”

“Worse,” I said. “She keeps sending me on speed dating. Sometimes she comes with me, to hurry them along.”

To check them out, more like. Mum didn’t trust me not to put my wishful-thinking goggles on, after a couple of rather unfortunate misunderstandings.

“Well, that’s what reeling’s all about!” said Ingrid. “Speed dating to music! I’m sure you’ll leave here with a good few numbers.”

I felt a sudden surge of positivity. That did it. Robert wanted me to dance with them,
and
I’d be saving Fraser from some Janet Learmont hostile takeover activity. If it meant defending Alice from any boyfriend poaching, I’d just have to force myself to dance with the most gentlemanly gentleman in Rennick, and indeed in the whole Border area.

And the sooner Max called me back with a buyer for that
table, the sooner I could put poor Ingrid out of her financial misery, and make sure of next year’s ball.

The moon was so bright, reflecting off the snow-covered fields, that I barely needed Duncan’s torch, and the warm glow of expectation tickling my stomach put an extra spring in my step as I crunched through the pristine snow, wrapped up in all my thermal underwear, Ingrid’s biggest fleece, and two scarves.

Catriona was already in organizing mode when I arrived. She wasted no time in beginning the lesson once I’d got my coat off, removing the beer from Dougie’s hand before he’d even cracked open the can.

“Hamilton House is known as the flirty reel!” she announced, marshaling the five of us into position in the middle of Robert’s sitting room. “Boys on the left, girls on the right. Dougie, I want you to be on your best behavior, please.”

“I see you’ve cleared all breakable furniture out of your sitting room for Dougie’s benefit,” said Fraser. He was looking like a genial polar bear in a thick white sweater and jeans.

“No,” said Robert. “It always looks like this.”

“What? Unfurnished?”

“It’s called style, Fraser, we don’t all have to clutter up our houses with moldy old stuff,” said Catriona, before turning her attention to me. “Now, don’t take this the wrong way, Evie, but since you’re going to need all the help you can get—no offense—I’ve brought you those instructions I mentioned. As you can see, I’ve done one for all the reels. Different colors for different people, and so on.”

She passed me something that looked like a knitting pattern. I didn’t recognize anything from the previous night.

“Thanks,” I said. “Why’s it called the flirty reel?”

Kirstie leaped in while Catriona’s mouth was still open. “It’s supposed to have been invented by a right goer who wanted to flirt with her lover and dance with her husband all at the same time. Nothing changes, right?”

“That depends on your partner, missy,” said Douglas.

Catriona glared at her. “That’s one story. The other is that it’s about a tragic young widow searching for her missing husband.”

My ears pricked up, and I caught Robert glancing at me, amused.

“But I suppose you believe what suits you,” she went on. “Now, the first lady—that’s myself—starts, and she ignores her partner . . .”

She turned her head artfully away from Robert, then stepped toward Dougie with a low nod.

“. . . she sets to the second man . . .”

“The lover,” supplied Kirstie.

Dougie gave her a lascivious wink, then wobbled his knees, while Catriona skipped neatly from one foot to the other.

“. . . but then she turns the
third
man.”

“Presumably the gamekeeper,” said Robert.

Fraser held out his hands and twirled her round in a slow-motion spinning top. Needless to say, she made it look very easy and didn’t come anywhere near crashing.

“Then I come round to the top of the set, and meanwhile my partner—”

“Who also has an eye for the lassies,” added Kirstie, for my benefit.

“—has started and does the same thing with the ladies.”

Robert swung his shoulders at Kirstie, then reached out
and grabbed
my
hands, gripping my thumbs, and quickly turned me around. As he did it, he glanced up at me from under his dark lashes. I knew he was acting up, but it still made my chest tighten.

“And then we join hands in a line and step to the side, two, three, four, and then to the other side, two, three, four. . . .”

Catriona carried on talking in her schoolteacher voice as we formed one line of boy-girl-boy, then another line of girl-girl-girl, and then did the inevitable circling round.

“So it’s just a load of partner-swapping,” said Dougie. “Got that?”

“You dance with everyone and end up with the one you brought,” I said.

“I know, it’s just
impossible
at first,” said Catriona sympathetically.

But it wasn’t. The flirting story made it a picture in my brain, and the patterns made a shape that I could see, crossing, then turning, then crossing again, like crochet.

Oh, my God, I thought, stunned. This was what it felt like to learn steps.

“Evie? Are you all right? You looked confused,” said Fraser. “Do you want to go through it one more time?”

“No,” I said slowly. “I think I’ve got it.”

“Don’t worry, when we put the music on it’ll go wrong,” Catriona reassured me. “It always does.”

Quite incredibly, it didn’t. Even with the music, I still knew where I was supposed to be going, who I was supposed to be reaching out for. Maybe it was because the others were sweet enough to reach out for my hands every time; maybe Violet was discreetly nudging me into place; maybe it was because part of me was instinctively aiming for Robert.

It was fast, it was fun, and after the fifth time, I realized I wasn’t even thinking about where I was going next.

We reeled until I accidentally knocked over the one ornament in the whole sitting room, at which point Catriona firmly shunted us into the kitchen to eat pasta served in minimalist white bowls. They were obviously expensive, but seemed joyless compared with the delicate violet and thistle crests of Kettlesheer’s service.