Chapter 26
The morning of the ball is the first truly gross day we’ve had, weather-wise, since I arrived in Scotland. The sky churns with clouds, rain sheets down the windows, and it seems like there’s a rumble of thunder about every three seconds.
Honestly, it seems kind of portentous.
We’re all sitting in the dining room, having breakfast, and while Ellie said this is the smaller, informal dining room, it’s still massive, and the table seats at least fifty people. It’s heavy oak, scarred in places, and I can imagine Highland chiefs sitting here, stabbing their knives into the table to make a point. Dead stags stare down at us with glass eyes, and the eggs on my plate seem kind of unappealing.
Maybe because they’re next to a lump of what appears to be coal.
I poke at it, trying not to wrinkle my nose.
“Black pudding.”
Glancing up, I see Miles has taken a seat across the table from me, and as he spreads a napkin in his lap, I think about him and Flora again. I haven’t asked him about any of that—that’s a thing real girlfriends get to do, not fake ones—but I have to admit, I’m still . . . okay, maybe curious is a strong word, but I’d genuinely like to know what went on there.
Instead, I ask about the pudding.
“Do I even want to know what’s in it?”
“You really don’t,” he replies, and I sigh, pushing it all the way to the edge of my plate.
“Aw, come on, Monters,” Gilly says, cutting into his own black pudding. “Don’t scare her off the stuff. It’s good for you.” He winks. “Puts hair on your chest.”
“Exactly what I’ve always wanted,” I answer, and Gilly laughs. He’s sitting beside Sherbet. Spiffy and Dons haven’t appeared yet, and Alex and Ellie are sitting at the head of the table, heads close together as they talk and ignore the rest of us.
“So,” Gilly says once he’s cleared his plate of black pudding. “Flora.”
Across the table, Miles suddenly gets very interested in his toast. “Flora,” Sherbet confirms.
“Should liven things up at least,” Gilly says. “She usually does.”
Sherbet snorts. “The last time Flora livened up a gathering, a suit of armor ended up in the fountain.”
Gilly heaves a sigh, his gaze far away. “That was one of my ancestors’. Thought Mum and Dad were going to cry.”
Miles is still very industriously eating his breakfast, and I tear a bit of crust off my toast, looking at him.
“So the ball,” I say, and he sighs, not looking up from his mushrooms. Honestly, mushrooms for breakfast—who does that?
“The ball,” he confirms, and I look over at Gilly and Sherbet, who are still chatting to each other. I wonder if they know about me and Miles, that it’s not real, or if we’re even supposed to pretend for them.
Playing it safe, I ask, “Are you going to wear a kilt?”
Miles finally looks up then, putting his fork down. “I am, yeah.”
I nod, chewing my bit of toast. “Can I make fun of you for that?”
“Could I stop you?” he asks, but he doesn’t sound pissed off or irritated. He’s just . . . relaxed. Normal. Then he clears his throat, putting his fork down and linking his fingers together on the tablecloth.
“I had the chance to speak to your parents for a little while when they came in last night,” he starts, and my shoulders go up a little bit, all the vague sort of camaraderie I’d been feeling disappearing.
Mom and Dad had gotten in late yesterday, just in time for the ball, but I was already in my room when they’d arrived. They’d both come in to say hi, of course, but I hadn’t known they’d spent any time with Miles.
“They’re . . . really lovely,” Miles goes on, and now he’s looking at his plate again, fidgeting in his chair. “And funny,” he adds. “And . . .”
“Not people who would call the paparazzi on their daughter?” I finish for him, and finally he looks up.
“Not at all,” Miles confirms, which sort of surprises me. I thought for sure he’d give me some long-winded defense, making sure to point out how tacky we all are. So what was a landed gentleman such as himself supposed to think?
Instead, he just looks into my eyes and says, “I’m sorry. I was wrong. Colossally wrong, really.”
I blink at him, feeling like I did that night in the club when I was suddenly confronted with Hot Miles. This is Contrite Miles, which is every bit as discombobulating, and it takes me a second before I shake my head and mutter, “It’s okay.”
Sighing, Miles picks up his fork and resumes pushing eggs around his plate. “It’s not, really. It was one of Seb’s valets, a bloke who’s worked at the palace for years. They sacked him, obviously.
“Anyway, truly, I’m sorry,” Miles says again. “I was an unmitigated ass about the entire thing, especially when the call was coming from inside the house, as it were.”
“To be fair, you’re an unmitigated ass about a lot of things,” I say, and Miles smiles at that, acknowledging it with a tilt of his head, which makes me laugh.
Aaaaand then I look up to see Ellie watching me, her brows drawn together, her big-sister sensors clearly on high alert, and I get up from the table, tucking my head so my hair swings over my face. And when she calls my name, quietly but urgently, I feign a sudden case of deafness.
I spend the rest of the day mostly holed up in my room, trying not to think too much about the night to come. The queen’s coming in this afternoon, and I was definitely trying to stay out of her way after our last meeting. I’d done what she’d asked, sure, but it seemed smartest to keep my head down.
The rain clears up by that afternoon, and when Glynnis comes in to help me get ready, I’m staring out the window, liking the way the light moves over the hills, how it is never the same from minute to minute, wishing I was good at painting or even photography so I could catch it somehow. Maybe that’s something I could try out next? The pictures on my phone aren’t doing it justice, so I finally decide to enjoy the view for what it is.
“Wool-gathering?” Glynnis asks, smiling at me as she hangs the garment bag on the door of my wardrobe.
“In the figurative or literal sense?” I ask, and when she frowns at me, I wave a hand.
“Sheep joke. I get it. What’s that?”
Glynnis smiles at me, those shiny teeth practically winking in the sunlight. “Your dress for tonight! Just arrived from the city.”
I assume the city means Edinburgh, and when Glynnis unzips the bag, I see that gorgeous tartan gown I’d drooled over in the catalog Glynnis had showed us, back when I was getting my new-and-improved Daisy look.
El remembered.
It feels silly to get choked up over a dress, but this is a really, really great dress, and also, it means that El still listens to me a little. Still sees me.
“It’s perfect,” I tell Glynnis.
A few hours later, I’m rethinking that statement. Yes, the dress is pretty. Yes, that riot of deep green and purple and black looks pretty with my hair and makes my skin glow. Yes, I feel a little bit like a princess, and okay, maybe, after I’ve first put it on, there is some twirling.
Just a little twirling.
But after an hour or so in it in a crowded ballroom, the tulle underneath the silk skirt is scratching my legs, and I keep surreptitiously tugging at the bodice, afraid my Facebook-famous boobs are about to steal the spotlight. Plus El let me borrow a tiara, and it is killing me. Too heavy, tight on my temples, and I’m very, very aware that I not only have several thousand dollars on my head but also several hundred years of history. This tiara had belonged to some ancestor of Alex’s, no one that important—Alex’s mom has a firm hand on all the stuff that actually matters, the famous jewels and all that, but this had been some king’s aunt’s or something like that, and I wonder if her picture is hanging up at Sherbourne Castle.
And if she’d wanted to toss this particular tiara from the tallest tower.
I’m out on the stone patio that overlooks the main patio downstairs, and I’m really considering tossing this heavy piece of silver, diamonds, and amethysts into the pond when I hear Dad say, “Good god, they’ve gotten to you, too.”
I turn around, smiling at my dad. “Actually, I was just thinking about throwing this priceless tiara in the duck pond,” I tell him, and he raises his champagne flute of club soda to me.
“There’s my girl.”
Dad ambles over to my side, and for a little bit, we stand in the soft-purple evening, looking down at the party.
Ellie is also in tartan tonight, although hers is the official Baird tartan. It’s pretty, and the diamonds in her hair sparkle. Once again, it’s clear to me that El was meant to be a princess.
“They’ll eat her up, these people,” Dad muses, waving his free hand to take in all the people milling around on the patio below us.
“I dunno, Dad,” I say, leaning close enough to him to bump his elbow. “They don’t really look much like cannibals to me.”
He glances down at me, that familiar smile tugging the corners of his lips. There are deep brackets on either side of his mouth, and the breeze blows his admittedly scraggly hair back from his face.
Threading my arm through his, I nod down at all those people in their fancy dresses and weird headgear. “They’ll learn to love her. Everyone loves El. It’s . . . like, her superpower. Intense likability. That and having really shiny hair.”
“She even had that hair as a baby,” Dad says, frowning. “It was unsettling.”
I laugh, but something in the sound must be off because Dad looks down at me. “And you, poppet? How are you holding up in all this madness?”
Dad has always been good at understanding when things bug me, maybe because I inherited his skill at laughing off stuff or covering with jokes. It works with Mom, usually works with El, too, but Dad . . . no, Dad is onto me.
“I’m okay,” I tell him, because that’s close to the truth. Sometimes I have fun, sometimes I actually love it here. Weirdly enough, the first thing that flashes through my mind is the other morning, riding through the park with Miles, and I shove it aside, but not quickly enough to stop a blush from climbing up my neck. Dad probably notices—he notices everything—but he doesn’t say anything.
“It’s like being on another planet,” I tell him, and Dad chuckles at that.
“It is,” he tells me. “Planet Rich and Famous. The air is rarefied and eventually makes it impossible to breathe.”
Then he smiles at me and says, “But you’ll both be fine. You have something I didn’t.”
I raise my eyebrows, waiting for the punch line.
And sure enough, Dad nudges me, winks, and says, “Good parents.”
I laugh at that, and Dad looks down at his empty glass. “Off for a refill. You need anything?”
When I shake my head, he gives me another wink. “Don’t throw any jewelry into the shrubbery without me, darling.”
Dad goes back inside, and I smile as I watch him go. I’ve missed having my parents around, which is a sentiment that might get me kicked out of teendom, but it’s the truth. No matter how embarrassing my dad might be, how distracted my mom always is, they love us. They’re easy to be around, and they’ve only ever wanted us to be healthy and happy. In that way, we’re a lot luckier than the royals.
Sighing, I turn back to the balcony. It’s still not dark—it won’t be until nearly 11 p.m.—but the light is so pretty, all soft and golden, edged in lavender, and the nearby hills are dark green against the sky. It’s also chilly, enough that I wish I’d brought a wrap or something.
“There you are,” I hear, and I turn around to see Miles coming out of the patio doors toward me, and he’s just . . . it’s very . . .
“Wow,” I finally say.
He is indeed wearing a kilt, but I don’t much feel like making fun of it. It’s the same tartan as my dress, the purple and green and black, and he’s wearing it with a matching bow tie, a white shirt, and a gorgeous black jacket. Even those socks the men wear with their kilts don’t look silly on him, and when I glance down, I notice—
“Is that a knife?” I ask, gesturing to the leather hilt in the cuff of his sock, and Miles looks down.
“Hmm? Oh, yes, it’s part of the whole look. It’s called a sgian-dubh, and it’s—”
I hold up a hand. “No. No history tonight,” I tell him, and to my surprise, he grins, a dimple flashing in his cheek. His curly hair has been tamed tonight, but it still curls around his earlobes, and he looks . . . nice.
Better than nice, but I’m not quite willing to admit that right now.
“No history,” he agrees, and then holds out his hand. “But how about dancing?”