Hard-Hearted Highlander

“If he doesn’t have the courtesy to make proper conversation with you, then perhaps you might draw it out of him by engaging him as we discussed.”

Avaline glanced over her shoulder. “What questions?”

“I can’t give you specific ones,” Bernadette said. “You must allow the conversation to guide you.”

Avaline turned from the window, looking confused. “Meaning?”

“Just...questions, Avaline,” Bernadette said impatiently. “Any entry that will give him leave to talk about himself. You might ask where he attended school. Did he have tutors, what is the name of his dog, does he enjoy hunting or riding.”

“What if he doesn’t enjoy riding or hunting?”

Bernadette’s patience was hanging by a tiny thread. She realized this was a difficult situation for Avaline, but could the girl not construct a few logical thoughts in her head? Did she truly have no sense of how to make conversation with a gentleman? “The point, darling, is to simply ask questions to promote conversation. Ask if he had a favorite governess, if takes his meals at Balhaire or his home, what is his favorite activity—questions.”

“Yes, I see,” Avaline said quickly, always eager to please, whether she knew how or not.

Bernadette sighed. She sat on the arm of the settee, her hands braced against her knees. “Like this,” she said, softening her voice and, hopefully, any outward sign of her growing frustration. “You might ask him ‘Do you often sail with your brother?’ And he might answer you completely, or say something quite curt, as he is wont to do, such as no. Then what do you say?”

Avaline shook her head.

“You say something like ‘I had my first voyage here, and I found it quite pleasing, although I took a bit seasick when we were in open waters. Have you ever experienced it?’”

Avaline blinked. “No, I was quite all right during the voyage, but Mamma took ill.”

“Avaline!” Bernadette cried.

“I mean, yes, yes, I understand.”

She understood nothing. Bernadette stood up and crossed the room to her charge. She put her hands on Avaline’s shoulders. “Avaline—you really must be prepared. I can’t always be there to help you.”

“What?” Avaline exclaimed, her eyes widening. “Of course you will! You’ll be beside me Friday evening to help me—”

“I don’t think I should go,” Bernadette said. “You rely on me far too much, and in this, you really must make your own way—”

“Bernadette!” Avaline grabbed Bernadette’s hands from her shoulder and held them tightly in hers. “I can’t possibly bear an entire meal without you! I need you!” She leaned forward and whispered, “You are my only hope. You know my mother is no help, my father doesn’t care—”

“But I can’t—”

Avaline suddenly let go of Bernadette’s hands. “You must attend! I insist!”

“Avaline—”

“I insist,” she said again, quite sternly, and much to Bernadette’s great surprise.

“Well then,” Bernadette said. It was high time Avaline stood up for something she wanted, even if that something was not what Bernadette desired in the least. “Naturally, I will do as you bid me.”

Avaline looked slightly stunned by her victory. She sniffed. She twirled a curl at her nape. “I only insist because I need you.”

“I understand.”

“Otherwise I would not insist.”

“As you said,” Bernadette agreed.

“It’s just that—”

“Not another word of apology,” Bernadette said, smiling. “You are allowed to speak your mind.”

Avaline released a long breath. “I feel as if my mind is always wrong,” she said morosely. “Thank you. I mean that truly, Bernadette.”

She didn’t have to say it. Bernadette knew that Avaline loved her, and more than what was reasonable to love a servant of her household.

* * *

BERNADETTE, AVALINE AND Lady Kent spent the better part of Friday afternoon preparing Avaline for the evening, and Bernadette thought their efforts were rewarded—Avaline looked like a princess in her butter-yellow gown and stomacher. Bernadette had put up Avaline’s golden hair in a tower that made her look taller than she was and had adorned it with tiny gold leaves. She couldn’t fathom how Mackenzie might look at his fiancée and not be at least a bit smitten with her.

Avaline’s preparations left precious little time for Bernadette to dress herself. She chose the gown of scarlet she’d worn to a Christmas feast two years past. There was no time to dress her hair, and she bound it simply at her nape. She looked quite plain in comparison to her charge.

At least she didn’t look as plain as Lady Kent, who had, for reasons that escaped Bernadette, chosen a drab brown gown that made her pale, slight frame look even smaller. Perhaps she meant to fade into a wall, for she’d dressed perfectly for it. Lady Kent often reminded Bernadette of a leaf scudding across the courtyard at Highfield—without substance and in a permanent tremble whenever her husband was about.

Bernadette was taller than both women and larger in frame, and she did not tremble in the presence of men, for which she owed her father grim thanks. He’d been a tyrant, not unlike Lord Kent in his way, and Bernadette had learned at an early age that weakness was to be exploited, and therefore, it was far better to stand tall and proud than to cower.

She thought it only through the grace of her grandfather and Albert that she hadn’t learned to despise all men. Her grandfather, God rest his soul, had been the kindest person she’d ever known. He would take her and her sister for long walks around Highfield, would invite them to his little house on the estate’s grounds and make them mince pies and sing songs to them. She had loved him so, had mourned him deeply when he’d died from an ague in his seventy-second year.

And, of course, Albert, the son of a shop merchant. Albert had wanted to study law, and he’d worked in his father’s dry goods shop until such time he could afford the schooling. He was bright and curious, thoughtful and tender with Bernadette, and he’d never said a cross word to her.

Albert and Grandpappa had taught Bernadette that there were men in this world who loved and cherished those in their lives. They were good, decent and loving men, both of them gone now, survived by men like Lord Kent and her father.

No, men didn’t intimidate her. No one intimidated her. She was an island unto herself, an untouchable, damaged bit of flotsam in a vast sea. Occasionally, she bumped into this ship or that buoy, but she would always spin away and continued on with her solo journey through this life.

It was past time to depart when Lady Kent and Avaline made their way downstairs to join his lordship and Bernadette. Lord Kent reeked of wine. He was impatient and made cross by the wait. He’d dressed in formal clothing and a newly styled and powdered wig. His shirt was trimmed in lace that dripped from his coat sleeves, and his neck cloth was tied so ornately it was small wonder he hadn’t choked himself in the process.

With one leg cast out, his hand on a staff that he carried for effect, he surveyed the three women before him and frowned slightly. “It will do, I suppose,” he said, and gestured for them to carry on, out the door. “Make haste, make haste, we’ll be tardy as it is.”

The ladies were ushered into the coach, and Kent put himself on a horse. Lord Ramsey was not attending this evening. According to Bernadette’s friend Charles, a footman, Ramsey had fallen into his cups far sooner than his brother and was too sodding drunk to travel. Charles was fond of Bernadette and often sought her out to regale her with news of the household. In fact, two months ago, it was Charles who told her that she would be sent to Scotland as the lady’s maid of Avaline.

“To Scotland,” she’d repeated disbelievingly. “Leave England?”

“You’ve not heard?” Charles asked, clearly exuberant in having the news before she did. “Miss Avaline is to marry one of the Highland brutes.”

Of course she’d known that Avaline was to marry a man from the Highlands, but Bernadette hadn’t, until that moment, imagined he was actually from the Highlands. She’d rather imagined a lord of some sort, with lands there, someone civilized, for everyone had heard that the Highlanders were brutal, traitorous people, and it had taken the English army to rout them.

“It’s surely temporary,” Bernadette said, thinking aloud. “I’ll be meant to settle her.”

But Charles, who had attended Lord Kent and Lady Chatwick when she and her husband had come to broker the marriage, shook his head. “You are to stay with her, as am I. As are a few more,” Charles confided. “He told the lady he’d not leave his only daughter in the hands of such primitive people.”

Wasn’t Lady Chatwick herself married to one of those primitive people? “And what did the lady say?” Bernadette asked.

“She said it was a kind thing he did to think so tenderly of his daughter, but that he could trust she would be well cared for.”