“Lucy!” Alice’s voice had turned sharp. “Look! Oh look, some of the gentlemen are coming out onto the terrace with their brandy! Which one will I see first? He will be my true love.”
“You have windmills in your head,” Lucy said, “to believe such nonsense.”
Alice was not crushed. She never listened when she was excited. Their father was hosting a dinner that evening, but both his younger daughters were still in the schoolroom and had not been invited. There was a pause. Through the open window, Lucy could hear the sound of voices from below now, masculine laughter. A trace of cigar smoke tickled her nose. There was the clink of glass on stone.
“Oh!” Alice sounded intrigued. “Who is that? I can’t see his face clearly—”
“That will be because he has his back to you,” Lucy said crossly. She was trying to sleep, but it was impossible while Alice kept talking. “Remember the spell. If he has his back to you, that means he will be a false love, not a true one.”
Alice made a dismissive sound. “It’s one of Lord Purnell’s sons, but which?”
“They are all too old for you,” Lucy said. She hunched a shoulder against her sister’s chatter. “Don’t let anyone see you,” she added. “Papa will be furious to hear of one of his daughters hanging out of the window in her nightgown. You’ll be ruined before you are even out.”
Alice was still not listening. She never listened if she did not want to hear. She was like a butterfly, bright and inconsequential, flitting off, paying no attention. “It is Hamish Purnell,” she said. She sounded disappointed. “He is already wed.”
“I told you it was nonsense,” Lucy said.
“Oh, they are arguing!” Excitement leaped into Alice’s voice again. She was as changeable as a weather vane, all disappointment forgotten in a moment. She threw Lucy a glance and then pushed the window open higher, leaning out of the stone embrasure. “Lucy!” she hissed. “Come and see!”
Lucy had heard the change in the voices from the terrace. One moment everything had been smooth and civilized, and the next there was an edge of anger, violence, even, that rippled across her skin, making the hairs stand on end. She slid from the bed and padded across the floor to where Alice was kneeling on the window seat, her body tense as a strung bow, to witness the scene below.
Two men were confronting each other on the terrace directly beneath them. They stood sideways to Lucy, so she could see neither of their faces. She recognized her cousin Wilfred’s voice though, smooth, patrician, holding the slightest sneer.
“Why are you here tonight, Methven? You’re no one, a younger son. I cannot believe my uncle invited you.”
His tone was full of contempt and deliberate provocation. Someone laughed. The men pressed closer, almost encircling the pair like a pack of dogs closing in, sensing a fight.
“Oh!” Alice said. “How rude and horrible Wilfred is! I hate him!”
Lucy had always hated her cousin Wilfred too. He was eighteen, heir to the earldom of Cardross, and he reveled in his status and his family connection to the Duke of Forres. He had spent the past year in London, where rumor said he had spent all his substance on drink and cards and women. Wilfred was snobbish, conceited and boorish, and here, surrounded by his kinsmen and followers, he thought he was brave.
“Perhaps the duke invited me because he has more manners than his nephew,” the other man said. His voice had rougher overtones than Wilfred’s drawl and a hint of Scots burr. He did not step back before Wilfred’s intimidation. He turned and Lucy suddenly saw his face in the light of the new moon. It was strong, the cheekbones, brow and jaw uncompromisingly hard. He was broad, too, wide in the shoulder and tall. Yet studying him, Lucy could see he was still young, no more than nineteen or twenty perhaps.
A whisper went through the men on the terrace. The atmosphere changed. It was more openly antagonistic now, but there was something else there, too, a hint of uncertainty, almost of fear.
Alice evidently felt it too. She had withdrawn into the shelter of the thick velvet curtains that cloaked the window.
“It’s Robert Methven,” she whispered. “What is he doing here?”
“Papa invited him,” Lucy whispered back. “He says he has no time for feuds. He considers them uncivilized.”
The Forres and the Methven clans had traditionally been enemies. The Forreses and their kinsmen the earls of Cardross had held for the Scottish crown since time immemorial. The Methvens had been brigands from the far north, descended from the Viking earls of Orkney, a law unto themselves. Lucy knew little about the Methvens other than that they were reputed to be as fierce and elemental as their ancestors. She looked down on Robert Methven’s face, etched so clear and sharp in the moonlight, and felt a shiver of something primitive echo down her spine.
Enemies for generations... It was in the blood, in the stories she had been told from the cradle. Clan warfare might be a thing of the past, but it was not long gone and old enmities died hard.
“One day,” Wilfred was saying, “I’ll take back the land your family stole from our clan, Methven, and I’ll make you pay. I swear it.”
“I’ll look forward to that.” Robert Methven sounded amused. “Until then, shall we partake of some more of the duke’s excellent brandy?”
He walked straight past Wilfred as though the conversation no longer interested him. Wilfred, looking foolish, barged past him to assert his precedence and go through the drawing room door first. Methven shrugged his broad shoulders, uncaring.
Alice let the curtain fall back into place. “I’m cold,” she grumbled. “I’m going to bed.”
Lucy struggled to reach up and pull the casement window closed. It was just like Alice to leave her to tidy up. That was the trouble with Alice; she was careless and thoughtless and Lucy was always having to smooth matters over for her.
“Hamish Purnell...” she heard Alice murmuring as she slipped beneath the covers of the bed. “Well, I suppose he is quite handsome.”
“He’s married,” Lucy reminded her. “Besides, he had his back to you when you first saw him.”
“He turned round,” Alice argued. “Face to me, back to the sea. True love. Perhaps his wife will die. Be sure to close the window properly, Lucy,” she added, “so no one knows we were watching.”
Lucy sighed, still struggling to shift the window, which remained obstinately stuck. The heavy velvet hem of the curtain knocked over the blue-and-white china vase on the shelf by her elbow. She watched as in slow motion the vase teetered on the edge, escaped her grasping fingers and tumbled through the open window to smash on the terrace below. Transfixed, she stared down into the darkness. Nothing moved. No one came. She could see the broken shards gleaming in the moonlight as they lay scattered on the stones.
“You’ve got to go and pick it up.” Alice’s voice reached her in an urgent whisper. “Otherwise they’ll find it and know we were watching.”
“You go down,” Lucy said crossly. “I didn’t knock the vase over,” Alice argued.
“Neither did I!” For all their age, there was a danger of this degenerating into a nursery quarrel. “You go,” Lucy said. “It was your idea to hang out of the window like a strumpet.”
“If I get caught I’ll be in trouble again,” Alice said. Suddenly her bright face looked young and anxious and Lucy felt a pang of something that felt oddly like pity. “You know how Papa is always telling me how Mama would have been ashamed of how naughty I am.”
Lucy sighed. She could feel herself weakening. She would never get Alice into trouble. It was part of the pact between them, binding them closer than close, sisters and best friends forever. Lucy sighed again and reached for her robe and slippers.