Swept off Her Feet (36 page)

Last week, the prospect of Fraser’s strong hands wrapped around mine would have sent me into quivers of daydreaming ecstasy. Now I was just dancing with my sister’s lovely fiancé.

“Fine with me,” I said miserably. “Reel me as hard as you like.”

I didn’t see Robert again that
evening, except across the dance floor.

Catriona had led him down to a group of her own friends at the other end of the ballroom, and our paths didn’t cross, despite the room-churning wildness of the final dance, which seemed to throw everyone together.

Fraser hadn’t been exaggerating: the Reel of the 51st Division, invented, he explained, by Scottish prisoners of war to remind them of home, was like being trapped in a blender of fiddles. God knows what the German guards thought they were up to; inventing a new form of attack, possibly. I was whirled from one man straight to the next, my arms nearly bounced out of their sockets as our linked hands formed the Saltire cross featured on the Scottish flag across the ballroom.

At one point, as the music whisked into a final frenzy and the sprung floor flexed beneath us, every single person on the floor was either turning or being turned, skirt billowing or kilt flying. Even before it ended, the crowd was cheering for an encore, and I was glad to have Fraser’s protective hands catching
mine as I sailed down the room, dizzy with adrenaline and champagne.

It was the purest, happiest moment of my life, filled with nothing at all except the music and the dance.

There was a short pause, in which you could hear everyone gasping for breath, laughing and slapping each other on the back; and then the band launched into “Auld Lang Syne,” the signal that the ball was over for another year.

Fraser grabbed my hand and Alice’s, and we were suddenly all in a big circle, singing and shaking our crossed arms up and down in time to the music. I had no idea what the words were, but everyone else did, so I just la-la-ed along, not wanting to look too English.

I closed my eyes and thanked Violet for a wonderful night, in her accessories and in her ballroom, and felt a strange sense of peace sweep over me.

And then it was all over, and we were all being discreetly evacuated from the room by Mhairi, in a long tartan skirt.

“Can you believe it’s nearly four in the morning?” Alice demanded as Fraser went off to get her coat. “Last time I was up this late, my head and my body were in different time zones. I should be dead on my feet, but . . . I’m not.”

“That’s because you’ve just run the equivalent of a half marathon while drinking champagne,” I said. “It’s how we built an empire. You should go and invade somewhere, quick.”

The hall had filled up with people shrugging on opera coats and velvet wraps and—rather spoiling the timeless atmosphere—checking that their cabs had arrived.

“Are you staying here?” She was assessing the piles of unwashed glasses and debris with her unstoppable cluttervision. “There’s going to be some tidying up to be done in the morning.”

“Committee’s job,” I said. There hadn’t been an announcement, not yet. Robert still hadn’t come out of the ballroom. I wondered if he’d taken Catriona upstairs to propose, with a view of the park in the moonlight. I wondered if he had Violet’s engagement ring at hand.

The tea cake of gloom returned to my throat.

“So!” Alice grabbed my arms. “When are you back in London? We need to celebrate properly! With Mum!”

“You want me there, don’t you? To stop her planning everything.”

“Yes! When are you back?”

I let out a long sigh. “I’m leaving after lunch. Max wants me back in the shop, and I’ve done all I can do here with the valuation.”

“Oh.” Alice sensed the mood and made a commiserating face. “Like that?”

I nodded. “Complicated. Family stuff.”

“Sure you don’t want to come back with us? Fraser’s got some amazing scotch for a nightcap.”

“No. My stuff’s here. I should get to bed. Long drive tomorrow.”

She looked at me solemnly. “You’re really okay? You would tell me? I mean, I know I’m sometimes a bit . . . bossy, but I
am
your sister. I do care.”

I patted her back. “I know. Go and celebrate your engagement, Mrs. Graham.”

Alice hugged me. “I’m sorry,” she started, into my hair, but I stopped her.

“Just go,” I said.

I lingered by the staircase for as long as I could, not wanting the evening to end; but Robert didn’t appear, and eventually even Ingrid and Duncan came out, and ushered me up to bed.

I undressed slowly in the silent bedroom, draping the shrug over the back of the dressing-table chair and laying the crystal necklace back in the box. It felt as if the whole room were watching me as I took off the last touches of my Cinderella night, leaving my makeup until last, just in case.

I had to admit, a tiny part of my brain was willing it to be different. Wishing so hard for that gentle tap on the door, the whispered confession that he’d changed his mind, that my ears were actually straining to hear it.

I’d started rehearsing my own protestations when I caught my own pajamaed reflection in the mirror, and pulled myself up short.

This would give me a more painful disappointment hangover in the morning than the champagne would. Robert had given me the one night of fantasy ballroom daydream I’d always wanted. I’d loved it, but now it was over. There would be no tap on my door or knock from the bathroom. Just the faint tick and crack of an old house sitting in an ocean of snow, and then, as dawn broke, the distant cheeps of the birds waking up across the valley.

My Cinderella night was over. But at least I’d had it. That was more than I’d expected for Valentine’s Day, even in my most delirious daydreaming.

And the memory of that breath-stopping kiss—that hadn’t even been in my imagination.

I didn’t hang around in the morning.

When I came downstairs, slowly, because my head was throbbing to the same pulse as my tattered feet, there were already teams of brisk women in overalls swishing down the main hall and hauling bags of rubbish around.

I offered to help, but Ingrid wouldn’t hear of it. She was in her velour leisure suit, a pair of large sunglasses fixed to her face.

“You should set off,” she insisted, forcing a bacon sandwich into my hand. There was a lot of breakfast left. “Aileen says the roads have been cleared, but it’ll still take you twice as long to get to the motorway. And there’s more snow forecast for this afternoon.”

“If you’re sure . . .”

“I’m sure.” Ingrid raised her sunglasses; underneath, she looked shattered but happy. “Drive safely, and come back next year.”

“Really?”

She smiled. “Once you’re on the guest list for the Kettle-sheer ball, you never leave.”

I listened to Ella Fitzgerald singing songs from the Cole Porter songbook on the car stereo all the way home to try to cling to the faded glamour of Kettlesheer as long as I could; but in the cold gray light of London, it felt even more like a dream than it had in the freezing Borders air.

My post-ball, post-Kettlesheer,
post-romantic-hallucination melancholy lingered like a bad cold you can’t shake off, or even enjoy indulging in bed with cocoa and DVDs.

Max didn’t help. I could tell he was of two minds about me and my contribution to his business by the way he kept offering to make me coffee one minute, then quacking on about the outrageous price of skim milk the next.

In the short term, my silver photograph frames and “house-clearance knickknackery” had done a roaring trade over the Valentine’s weekend, raking in the shop’s highest-ever weekly profit. Even my one-eyed Hitler teddy was sold for fifty quid, and Max grudgingly asked me to look out for more champagne coupes. But in the long term, my big fish had swum away, taking Max’s commission—and potentially my job—with it.

He was, naturally, very,
very
disappointed when Duncan called the following Thursday to say that the McAndrew family was terribly sorry to have wasted his time, but they felt unable to part with their Chippendale dining set for sentimental reasons.

More than disappointed, actually. The howl of anguish when he put the phone down was audible in Earl’s Court. Of course, Max blamed me, but not for the reason I was expecting.

“I bet you did your full ‘Oooh, think of the magnificent occasions this table’s seen!’ routine!” he raged, systematically ripping up the contracts he’d drawn up for the clients interested. “ ‘Ooh, you can’t sell this! It’s part of your family’s bloody story!’ “

“Well, it was,” I said. “Is. You’ve still got plenty of other stuff to sell, though.” I pointed to the list I’d made of the Sèvres china, the good paintings, a barrackload of rusty weaponry—the antiques I was fairly sure Violet hadn’t had copied. “And it’s photographed, too. You could send those photos I e-mailed you straight to the auction house.”

Max glared at me. I noted he’d had his silver streaks topped up, and his teeth were looking suspiciously pearly. He’d clearly invested a lot of time and money in his new HD-ready appearance. Sadly, there wasn’t much he could do about his foul expression.

“If you find someone who wants a gross of card tables with a side order of stuffed peregrine falcons in cases, ring me as soon as possible,” he said with elaborate sarcasm. “Otherwise, I’m going out for lunch. What was that fairy tale where the princess had to spin flax into gold?”

“Rumpelstiltskin,” I said.

“Oh yes. Well, I’d like you to spin Duncan McAndrew’s repro Victorian escritoires into a Sheraton side table and a Turner watercolor of the Loch Ness Monster by the time I get back.” He added a malevolent leer, which I think was supposed to be raffish, but just came across as camp Bond villain. “I hope you’ve done your thank-you letters.”

Of course I had. It had taken every ounce of dignity I had not to include my e-mail, my landline, and my mobile number.

When Max had flounced a safe distance down the King’s Road, I sank onto the chair behind the desk and logged onto eBay. The threat of imminent redundancy, not to mention my mother’s continued hints about the state of my flat, had focused my mind regarding my private dealings. So far this month, I was three hundred quid up, and the carpet was visible in my spare room.

The problem was, the more persuasive the sales pitches I wrote, the more I wanted to keep the item. It was a genuine struggle. I was deep into an emotional description of a tatty child’s sampler when the bell jangled above the door.

I looked up to see Walter Piven, a dealer acquaintance of Max’s, slithering in. If Max was the antique world’s Heathcliff, Walter was more of a Fagin type, down to the greasy-brimmed hat that was
his
trademark. He dealt mainly in high-end Oriental stuff, and I only ever saw him when he came round to collect Max’s bridge IOUs.

“Evie, it’s about those escritoires,” Walter began. His eyes kept slipping sideways to the door. “I want to make a cash offer on them.”

“Escritoires?” I repeated stupidly. Walter didn’t do brown furniture.

“Yes, Max showed me some photos—the ones you were valuing up in Scotland. I want to buy them. All of them.” He licked his lips. “For a friend. Who’s furnishing a . . . an old people’s home.”