Holiday House Parties (9 page)

“What a baby!” Emmaline muttered under her breath.

Geordie gave Caroline one quick, unreadable glance and then began to examine the injured leg by exerting a firm pressure at significant places along its length. He could find no sign of injury, however, until he tried to move Douglas's foot at the ankle. The movement elicited a loud cry of pain. That was the sign Geordie was looking for. He stood up and took a deep, relieved breath. “It's yer ankle, like as no. It might be broken, but more likely it's only a sprain. We'll see after we get ye home and cut off yer boot.”

“It's broken,” Douglas muttered dejectedly. “I know it's broken. How am I to get back with a broken ankle?”

“Archie and I will support ye while ye hop on yer good leg. Here, let's get ye up and try it out.”

They started back, with Geordie taking one of Dawlish's arms and Archie the other, the injured man groaning with every hop. The four ladies followed in silent dejection, depressed not only by Douglas's pain but by the rapidly darkening sky, the cutting wind, and the snow that was now falling more heavily than ever.

By the time they emerged from the wood, Dawlish was exhausted and quite unable to go on. They set him down in the snow and tried to decide what to do next. “Shall the ladies push on to the stable and send a carriage?” Bella asked.

“A carriage could never get through the drifts,” Archie said. “I'd give a king's ransom for a sleigh right now. If this were America, you'd probably have a sleigh in the stable. I hear sleighs are as commonplace in America as they are in Moscow.”

“But this isn't America,” Emmaline said drily. “Or Moscow.”

“For a' that,” Geordie suggested, “ye lassies can push on. No need for ye to hang about with us.”

“Not on your life,” Caroline said. “We may prove useful yet.”

“What do you take us for?” Emmaline asked, offended. “Deserters?”

“Of course we'll stay with you,” Bella added. “Even Jane agrees with that, don't you, Jane?”

“Yes, I do,” Jane said staunchly. “Besides, it's getting too dark for us to go on alone.”

That settled, they all looked back at Dawlish, sitting in the snow with his back against a tree, his arms crossed over his chest and his head lowered glumly. “I suppose we'll have to carry him,” Archie said quietly to Geordie, “though it won't be easy through this snow.”

“We can fashion a litter,” Geordie exclaimed, his eyes brightening. “Did ye hear that, Douglas, lad? With a litter we can carry ye back like a sultan of Araby on a sedan-chair. All we need do is cut two strong branches for poles, and button my coat over them for a seat.”

“Splendid idea!” Archie exclaimed, his expression instantly turning cheerful. They immediately set to work, and in a few minutes the poles were ready. Then Geordie removed his greatcoat and riding coat, laid the riding coat out on the snow, buttoned it, pulled the sleeves inside out within the coat and slid the poles inside the sleeves. He then put on his greatcoat and gloves and assisted Archie in helping Douglas to sit upon the makeshift seat.

As they were about to lift the poles, Archie in the front and Geordie in the rear, Caroline offered a suggestion. “Emmaline and I can hold the poles at the rear, Lord Dunvegan. Two women are surely strong enough to replace one man.”

“But what for, ma'am?” Geordie asked her. “I don't need replacin'.”

“Have you forgotten why we came? If Emmaline and I can help to carry the litter, then you, my lord, can drag the Yule log.”

This suggestion met with universal approbation, and before long the whole party was on the move—Archie carrying the litter at the front, Douglas seated on the buttoned coat with his injured leg resting on a pole and the good one dangling, and Emmaline and Caroline behind. Jane marched alongside the litter, and last in the line came Geordie pulling the log. They were not as cheerful a group as when they'd started out earlier, but neither were they as glum as they'd been when Douglas's injury was first discovered.

When they came in sight of the house, Caroline beckoned to Jane and asked to be relieved. “I'd not ask it of you, Jane, except that there's something I must do before we get back. Holding the pole is not very difficult, and we haven't much farther to go. Besides, you've been so very strong today, I feel sure you can manage it.”

“Yes, come to think of it, I
have
been strong, haven't I?” Jane said with a blink of surprise. “I didn't faint once, in spite of all that's happened.” She took the pole from her friend and smiled. “I'm rather proud of myself.”

Caroline smiled back at her. “I'm proud of you, too.” Then, waving her on, Caroline turned and walked back to where Geordie was struggling along with the log. She took hold of the rope and fell in beside him. “That log must be very heavy to pull, my lord,” she remarked with what she hoped was a tone of nonchalance.

“Did you think I needed help, ma'am?” Geordie asked coldly. “If that's why ye dropped back here, ye can go back to yer friends. I assure ye I'm doin' quite well.”

“I know you are,” she said. “I have another reason for wishing to walk with you.”

“Oh?” He looked at her suspiciously. “And what may that be?”

She threw a hesitant glance. “I wanted to thank you, my lord, for all your acts of quick-thinking courage today.”

“Ah, so that's it.” And about time, too, he thought. “'Twas nothin' so courageous, ma'am. But if ye truly wish to thank me, ye can stop callin' me
my lord
, which I told ye afore I downa like.”

“Very well, I'll call you Geordie, if it will please you. But you cannot deny that you were courageous. This afternoon you've been … well, almost heroic.”

“Heroic, ma'am?
I
?” The corners of his mouth turned up in a little smile. He was beginning to enjoy this conversation. “Are these words issuin' from the lips of the same Miss Woolcott who called me a boorish, shameless libertine only yesterday?”

“And so you were, yesterday,” she retorted quickly, but almost instantly regretted it. She had not come to insult him but to thank him. She had to try again. “Today, I must admit, I saw another side of you,” she went on bravely. “It makes me think that … that I might have been mistaken about you. If I have misjudged you, my lor—Geordie—I am … very sorry.”

“Ye needna be sorry, lass,” he said with wicked amusement. “As Sophocles says, ‘To err from the right path is common to mankind.' Like as no, he meant womankind as well.”

She stopped in her tracks. “Good God! That's from the
Antigone
! Why didn't you tell me you knew it?”

“Why, ma'am, did ye assume that I didn't?”

She flashed him a look of burning anger, but then her eyes fell. “You are determined to prove me a toplofty prig,” she mumbled, trudging onward. “Now, I suppose, you're going to tell me you've even read it in Greek.”

“I have no intention of tellin' ye so,” he grinned, enjoying himself to the hilt. “Do ye take me for a braggart?”

She stopped again, staring at him through the darkness and the blowing snow, overwhelmed by waves of anger and humiliation. For the first time, she realized fully what their relationship had been. From the moment of their first meeting, he'd done nothing but make a fool of her. Even now, when she'd come to him filled with gratitude, he'd turned the situation into farce. All her feelings of gratitude died abruptly. She now wanted nothing so much as to slap his arrogant face. “I suppose,” she said icily, “that means you
have
read it in Greek?”

To the Scotsman, her discomfiture was sweet revenge. “Aye, I've read it in Greek. Many times. And,” he added, rubbing it in, “the rest of Sophocles, too.”

She thrust her part of the rope at him furiously. “That,” she snapped indignantly, “is the most disgusting thing you've yet said to me!” And she stormed off toward the house with as much dignity as she could summon. But dignity was difficult to achieve while wallowing through the snow, especially when she could hear his hooting laughter reverberating in the wind behind her.

9

Dawlish was carried up to bed and the doctor sent for. The poor physician had to slog two miles through the snow to attend him. He pronounced that the patient was suffering from a sprained ankle, that the fellow should keep it bandaged tightly for a couple of weeks, and that he should not walk about on it more than necessary. If the doctor felt any disgust at having to come out in such weather to attend so minor an injury, his feelings were certainly assuaged by the large fee that Lady Teale bestowed on him.

Dawlish himself was both relieved and disappointed. It would have given him some sort of satisfaction—after carrying on as he had—to have suffered a broken bone, but on the other hand, he was grateful that he didn't have to spend the rest of the Christmas holiday in bed. He had been planning for several days to do something very special on Christmas Eve, and he would not have liked to do it from a bed of pain.

His plan was to make Caro Woolcott an offer. It was the first time in all his twenty-eight years that he'd felt tempted to offer for a lady. Never before had he found a girl so perfectly suited to his taste. No only was she lovely to look upon, but she shared all his interests and concerns. And, best of all, she seemed to return his regard. For, as he confided to his sister when she came to see him after the doctor's departure, there was little point in a man's making a girl an offer if she was likely to refuse him. “You do think, don't you, Emmaline, that Caro will accept me?” he asked his sister hopefully.

Emmaline studied her brother with unwonted sympathy, for he looked a bit pathetic as he sat on his bedroom chaise with his bandaged leg resting on a pillow. “Caro's said nothing to me on the subject,” she told him frankly, “but she
has
been in your pocket ever since we arrived. I suppose that's as good a sign as any.”

“Yes, I think so, too,” Douglas smiled, leaning back against the chaise with his arms behind his head, suddenly the very model of confident manhood. “I shall put the question to her tomorrow evening. It's quite the ideal time, don't you agree? In that way, in later years, she and I shall always have a particular, personal feeling about Christmas Eve.”

Emmaline nodded, approving of the romantic notion. “I wish you all the best, Douglas,” she said. “Caro will be as fine a life's mate as any man could hope for.”

With that, she left to dress for dinner. But as she passed Caroline's bedroom, she had a sudden urge to reveal to her friend the exciting surprise in store for her. “Caro,” she chortled, popping her head in the door, “be sure to save your most fetching gown for tomorrow evening.”

“What did you say, Emmaline?” Caroline said in an abstracted voice. She spoke from the window seat, where she'd been sitting for the past hour. She'd been staring out into the darkness, thinking about the Scotsman, George David McAusland, Lord Dunvegan, who wanted only to be called Geordie. He'd called her
dautie
, a darling, but it was he who was dautie. She'd spent the hour at the window glumly reliving the very unsatisfactory conversation she'd had with him earlier, berating herself for having misjudged him, and for having been so poor-spirited in the manner in which she'd owned up to that misjudgment. She hadn't even apologized, and an apology was the very least the fellow deserved after having practically saved her life that afternoon! Her mind was a tumultuous sea of confusion, in which feelings of shame and frustration tossed about with other, deeper emotions that she was afraid to identify. She'd been uncomfortably aware of those strange emotions even before the afternoon he'd kissed her, but the kiss has stirred them up to a troublesome pitch. She'd been trying to come to grips with those feelings when Emmaline made her abrupt interruption.

“I said,” Emmaline repeated gleefully, “that you must choose your most fetching gown to wear to dinner tomorrow.”

Caroline looked over at her in utter confusion. “I don't know what you're talking about, Emmaline, but don't stand there half-in and half-out. Do come in.”

Emmaline whisked herself in and shut the door. “I shouldn't be telling you this, my love,” she grinned, “but Douglas is planning a tremendous surprise for you on Christmas Eve. So you must be in your very best looks.”

“Douglas is planning a surprise for
me
? I don't understand. What sort of surprise?”

“Surely you can guess. His intentions toward you are as plain as pikestaff. Even Lady Powell was hinting of it yesterday.”

“I don't have any idea what you're babbling about,” Caroline said impatiently, passing her hand over her forehead and attempting to clear her mind. “What was Lady Powell hint—” But then she remembered. “Good God!” she exclaimed, turning pale. “You don't mean—?”

“That's exactly what I mean,” Emmaline said, her face glowing with excited anticipation. “You're going to get an offer. A Christmas Eve offer!”

“Oh, Emmaline,” Caroline gasped,
“no!”

Emmaline was taken aback. There was no mistaking that Caroline's response was not a happy one. “No?” she asked, her high spirits instantly deflated. “What do you mean, no? Don't you believe me? I'm not mistaken, Caro. Douglas does intend to offer. He told me so.”

“Emmaline, please!” Caroline jumped up from the window seat and ran across to her friend. “Don't let him. He
mustn't
!”

“But of course he must. Everyone expects it.”

“How can they expect it? They have no cause—”

“No cause? How can you say they have no cause? Why, you and Douglas have had your heads together constantly for the past four days!”

“But that was only … I never meant—! Honestly, Emmaline, how can you have believed I cared for him? Didn't you always say he wasn't my sort?”