THE JOURNEY FROM Balhaire to Crieff was tiresome, particularly given that the roads were single track and many of them used so infrequently that the coachmen were forced to stop more than once to clear debris from their path. Every day for a week they bounced along to a mean inn, then woke up and started the day over again.
Contrary to her family’s wishes, Catriona’s bleak mood was not improved by the travel.
It seemed weeks had passed instead of days when at last the coach rolled onto the High Street at Crieff and came to a halt at the Red Sword and Shield Inn. It was midday, but Catriona was so weary she all but fell out of the coach and into the hands of the young Mackenzie coachman who caught her and set her upright.
“Here you are, then, Miss Mackenzie,” he said. “We’ll be back for you in a fortnight, perhaps three weeks, aye?”
In that moment, she didn’t care if they ever returned for her, because she could not fathom putting herself in that coach once more.
“There she is!” called a voice very familiar to her.
She turned about and smiled at her uncle Knox, who strode across the cobblestones to her, his coat flapping in time to his gusto. “My dear, dear girl, you’ve come at last!”
Her beloved uncle met her with such verve and enthusiasm that she was propelled a step or two backward, and her cap was knocked from her head. He wrapped her in a hearty embrace, smashing her face against his chest, then laid several kisses on her cheek before standing back, holding her at arm’s length, admiring her as the coachmen tried to hand her the hat. “Still a beauty, my little one,” he said proudly.
Still? She supposed that now she was three and thirty, he was expecting her looks to have begun to fade away into spinsterhood. “It’s so good to see you, Uncle Knox,” she said. “You’ve no idea.”
Her uncle had grown a wee bit more corpulent since the last time she’d held him. What was it, a year or so ago? He’d come from England to visit his sister, Catriona’s mother—and to pay a call to Auntie Zelda at Kishorn. Aye, he was a wee bit rounder, but quite handsome with his glittering pale green eyes and graying hair, which he’d bobbed with a black velvet ribbon. His coat was fine wool, and his waistcoat had been embroidered with gold thread that matched the embroidery along the center front of his coat. His neckcloth was snowy white and tied into an elaborate knot. Catriona felt quite plain in comparison.
“Come, come, you must be thirsty. And hungry, too, are you? Here you are, my good men, a night’s lodging and all the wine and women you might want,” he said, tossing a bag of coins to the driver. “Don’t hasten back now. I should like time with my most favored niece.” He wrapped an arm around Catriona’s shoulders and wheeled her about. “It’s such a dreadfully long way from Balhaire, is it not? I’ve always said to Margot that there ought to be an easier way to reach her, but alas, she has long loved your father and refuses to leave him.”
“Leave him?” Catriona exclaimed.
“You’ve come alone, have you? No girl to tend you? Nothing but those brutes to drive you and handle your trunk?” he asked as he hurried her along the cobblestones toward the entrance of the inn’s public room. Bright red poppies graced the window boxes, and tables and chairs had been arranged outside, yet there was no one enjoying the sun.
“I’ve a girl for you if you haven’t one, although I can’t vouch for her skills. She seems to do well enough to my eyes, but my guest, Miss Chasity Wilke-Smythe, claims she is wretched, and yet Chasity looks rather pretty to these old eyes.”
Guests! Catriona should have known—Uncle Knox constantly surrounded himself with a retinue of friends and acquaintances, gathered from far-flung corners and questionable establishments. Catriona felt suddenly self-conscious as he bustled her along. She could smell herself, felt wretched in her traveling clothes and wanted nothing more than a hot bath and a wee bit of brandy.
“Between you and me, love, the Wilke-Smythes are a bit demanding,” Uncle Knox said in a low voice. “And a bit too far on the side of the Whigs, if you take my meaning.” He waggled his brows at her.
She did not take his meaning.
“But you will find great company in them, I am certain of it, and if not, there is Countess Orlov and her cousin, Vasily Orlov. Now, there is a colorful pair if ever there was.” He leaned his head to hers and whispered, very dramatically, “Russians.”
“I beg your pardon, Uncle. You didna mention you were already entertaining guests in your reply to my request to join you.”
“Why, I’ve hardly any!” he declared. “And besides, I should have an entire assembly under my roof and turn them all away if it meant I might spend a summer with my much beloved niece.”
“No’ a summer, Uncle. A fortnight—”
“Here we are!” he declared, ignoring her, and with one arm around her, he used the other as a sort of battering ram and shoved open the door of the inn, then loudly proclaimed, “She’s here!”
The small group of people gathered at a table in the center of the room looked at her. Those were her uncle’s guests, she gathered, as the only other people in the inn were two men standing at the counter in the back with tankards before them.
Uncle Knox dragged Catriona forward to the table and introduced her to his company: Mr. and Mrs. Wilke-Smythe and their daughter, Miss Chasity Wilke-Smythe. Miss Chasity Wilke-Smythe resembled her mother so much that the pair looked a wee bit like twins in their powdered hair and matching coats. The former, at first glance, seemed scarcely old enough to be out.
She then met Countess Orlov, an elegant woman with a discerning gaze, and her cousin, the handsome, yet foppish, Mr. Vasily Orlov. “You must call me Vasily,” he said, his name rolling off his tongue as he bowed over her hand.
Next was Mrs. Marianne Templeton, whom Catriona knew as the widowed sister of Uncle Knox’s neighbor in England. Her mother had mentioned her once, had said she was quite eager to make Uncle Knox her next husband. She looked a wee bit older than Uncle Knox and examined Catriona from the top of her head to the tips of her boots. And last, an elderly gentleman with thick, wiry brows. Lord Furness, an old friend, her uncle said, scarcely glanced at her.
Uncle Knox sat her between Lord Furness and Miss Chasity Wilke-Smythe and ordered tots of whisky for them all. “In honor of my niece. The Scots are fond of whisky, is that not so, Cat?”
“Ah...many are, aye,” she agreed.
“When in Scotland, lads, we drink as the Scotch do,” Uncle Knox said, and held his tot aloft. “To Scotland!”
“To Scotland!” his guests echoed.
Catriona tolerated whisky well enough, but she was so parched today that she downed the tot and set the small glass firmly on the table. That was when she noticed everyone was staring at her. “It was just a wee tot,” she said a bit defensively. She was still bruised from the apparent censure she’d received from her family on that rain-soaked afternoon at Kishorn.
“Another!” shouted Uncle Knox. “Another round for us all!”
The whisky had the effect of making the group a bit merrier. They began to laugh and talk over one another, correcting each other’s accounting of what had happened the night before, which, from the sound of it, had been a game of Whist gone horribly wrong. Catriona listened, and she smiled and nodded where she thought she ought, but she felt nothing but fatigue weighing her down. She leaned far back in her chair so that Lord Furness could speak over her to Miss Wilke-Smythe. The inn was beginning to fill, and she prayed that meant Uncle Knox would soon see them to Dungotty, the estate he’d allegedly purchased for a song. Unfortunately, he showed no sign of leaving, ordering kidney