The Dog House (Harding's World of Romance) (5 page)

Fiona
picked up the nearest glass of wine and drank deeply, tasting nothing as she tried to run through her speech again in her head. Had she gone overboard? Was she becoming one of those academics so wrapped in her subject that she bored people to tears?  She glanced around surreptitiously to try to gauge the audience, but her eyes immediately caught Colin’s as he stared at her openly, and she looked away hastily and fled to the washrooms to recompose herself.

She stood in front of the well-lit mirror and put her hands against her scarlet cheeks. Whether it was because of stress and embarrassment or simply the wine, it was hard to tell, but her usual pale complexion was now as ruddy as
Dougal’s.  Her fine, fair hair, which could be described as strawberry-blonde on a good day, looked like straw under the unforgiving light, falling loosely around her face. Far from the desired natural look of a peaches and cream complexion, she looked like an unnatural tomato and straw catastrophe. She plunged her face directly under a stream of cold water and waited to feel the fire in her cheeks subdue.

When she raised her head, Colin’s escort was in the bathroom, glancing at her curiously. “I do hope you aren’t ill,” she said in d
istaste, seeming to mistake Fiona as one of the serving women because she added, “We’ve all eaten from those hors oeuvres trays and you could make us all sick.”

Fiona
grabbed a towellete from the neatly-folded pile in a wicker basket by the sink, hiding her face in it until the unpleasant woman had left the room. She waited another minute to be sure she was out of sight before stepping back out to rejoin the crowd.

By now the speeches had ended and the room was filled again with the chatter of voices echoing against the vaulted ceiling.
Fiona spotted Rhona in the crowd and headed toward her like she was a lighthouse in the sea of strangers, but another couple had already grabbed her arm and pulled her into a conversation before Fiona reached her. Disconsolately she tried to choose a new destination to give her a look of purpose, but her random path was cut off by an amused-sounding voice aimed in her direction.

“I do believe that it’s our
very own historical expert,” Colin was saying as he threaded his way between people to arrive in front of Fiona. “Allow me the honour of introducing myself to such an illustrious personage. I am Colin Parker.”

Fiona
accepted his handshake reluctantly, looking up into the twinkling blue eyes to see if he was making fun of her. But his gaze remained frank and friendly as he smiled at her, his entire, attractive face seeming open and unassuming. It didn’t fit at all with Fiona’s preconceived notions of a class snob, but then Sarah had warned her that he was highly charming. It was good to have advanced warning with someone like this, who could fix his gaze on you and make you feel special, like you were the centre of his attention. It was flattering, but it didn’t excuse his attitude toward commoners such as herself.

“Nice to meet you,” she lied, having no desire either to get to know some spoilt rich man or to have him get to know her,
her guilt about Livingstone making her feel immediately defensive. She switched to the automatic, generic comments that were useful on such occasions. “I hope you’ll enjoy Mackenzie House.”

He wasn’t thrown off. “Come now, I’m not the mayor,” he laughed, his eyes crinkling in a conspiratorial manner. “You can save your polite inanities for him. Now what intrigues me is to hear your poet quoted with a proper accent. To paraphrase, your silver flashing tongue which softer years in England never tamed, carving through this high and mighty crowd…”

In spite of her misgivings, Fiona was impressed. She had often despaired that the art of quoting poetry was rapidly disappearing, and it was all the more impressive to have Campbell’s lines rewritten and thrown back at her after having been heard only once. She might well have to revise her previous assumption that all of the upper class married their first cousins.

To hide her surprise, she adopted a curt tone. “Well, I am Scots
. There still are a few of us left in Scotland, although you might not guess it to hear this crowd.”

Colin seemed to ignore the barb in her voice as he laughed easily. “Oh, there are a few genuine Scots here today,” he said, glancing around the room as if he knew most of the faces present. “Most have just learned to hide their accents.”

“Because a Scottish brogue is something to hide?” she asked caustically.

He appeared
to find her defensive tones amusing. “I take it you are not overly fond of us landed gentry types,” he observed mildly, not seeming to take any offense at the idea.

“I can suggest a few songs by
Capercaillie and the Proclaimers if you want to hear my views on the subject expressed by better wordsmiths,” she replied, wondering if he had ever listened to any Scottish bands of the past few decades.

He cocked his head to one side and examined her. “Oh, I don’t think you have any troubles expressing yourself,” he said lightly. His blue eyes were still fixed on her face, ignoring the rest of the room as he spoke to her in such a familiar way that
Fiona found herself starting to feel unarmed. She took a step back.

“I think you’re making fun of me,” she said cautiously. “Now if you’ll excuse me…”

“Not so fast,” he protested, his arm reaching for hers to hold her back, his touch gentle but firm. “There was no such matter in my thoughts. I simply felt an overpowering desire to meet you after hearing your speech.”

Fiona
felt herself flush again, still not convinced that he wasn’t somehow teasing her while at the same time appreciating the slight nod at Shakespeare. So the man could read at least. “Well now you’ve met me, a bona fide Scotswoman,” she said, her eyes meeting his defiantly. Let him prank her, if that was his intention. If she were his one experience in trying to meet a commoner, he wouldn’t find her as easy as he expected. “Now you can scratch that off your list.”

As if to prove that her train of thought was on the right track, he flashed
her a beautiful smile. “I was actually hoping that you’d accept an invitation to dinner with me,” he said cheerfully. “I would like a chance to get to know you better. You intrigue me, and I’m sure that you could teach me a thing or two about my own backyard.”

It was an unfortunate turn of phrase, making
Fiona immediately think of her unwelcome intrusions onto his estate. It also reminded her of the haughty warning letter that she had received last week, threatening her with eviction if her dog once again created a disturbance at the main house. She drew her guard back up, remembering all too clearly that under this charming, handsome exterior was a harsh and unrelenting landlord.

“I’m extremely busy,” she found herself saying coldly. “I have a book to write and I really can’t afford the time.”

Colin’s eyebrows raised in just the mildest astonishment. “Even writers have to eat,” he pointed out. “And if your mission is to raise awareness of highlands culture, I’m as good a place to start as any. Or we could make it lunch, if that takes less time.”

She almost smiled. He was persistent, in any case. “I really can’t,” she said, her tone slightly softer.
“Although I strongly encourage you to look into local history if you’re interested. A lot has gone on here.”

At this point Colin’s companion joined them, her eyes trained on Colin although they flicked over to
Fiona after a moment. “Oh, it’s you again,” she said, her voice cheerful but not particularly friendly. Then she turned back to her escort. “Come on, Colin. Rabbie and Em are talking to the Bassingtons and trying to choose a date for a dinner party. We need your advice. Come help us.”

Colin graciously allowed himself to be dragged away by his insistent date, but he looked back over his shoulder at
Fiona as he was led away, his eyes as friendly as ever. Fiona forced herself to look away, hunting for the Andrews and suddenly conscious of a multitude of curious eyes watching her. She settled instead for her favourite snacks table and hid away behind it to digest her unexpected meeting and a few wedges of cheddar.

“So glad that Bridget managed to rescue you,” Colin was greeted by Aiken as he rejoined the group. “Were you trapped in a never-ending lecture on Scottish history?”

“Or was the siren seducing you with poetry?” Emma suggested, her eyes glinting mischievously.

“Siren?” Bridget repeated in a pained voice. “Did you hear her accent? I seriously mistook her for one of the cleaning staff earlier this evening. Although that could be the waitress uniform.”

There was a low chuckle from the others. Colin forced a bland smile. “She certainly is passionate about the area,” he said neutrally.

Aiken gave him a friendly cuff on the arm. “You don’t have to be a martyr for the family trust,” he said amicably. “It’s all well and good to attend these functions but you don’t have to force an interest in ancient history and architecture to be able to write a fat cheque.”

“We did read classics at Cambridge together, didn’t we?” Colin asked with a grin.

Aiken rolled his eyes. “No need to drag up the past. Now let’s fix a date with the Bassingtons and then place bets on how long Davis there manages to hold onto that young bride.”

All eyes turned to focus on a septuagenarian being supported by a leggy blonde at least forty years his junior. Colin was grateful for the change in conversation and smiled along at the game, but his thoughts were elsewhere. As one of the region’s most eligible bachelors, he wasn’t at all accustomed to his dinner invitations being refused. And he had been genuine in his desire to have more time to speak with her. There was something most intriguing about this articulate, passionate and strong woman.

Hearing his friends’ easy dismissal of her made him reflect uncomfortably on his own earlier aversion to people who spoke and dressed like Fiona. He didn’t disrespect them per se, but it was true that he had grown up accepting that certain circles simply weren’t meant to overlap. East End is East End and West End is West End, as they said. Never the twain should meet.

The truth was that he seldom met people of he
r station, unless they were the serving staff at restaurants and clubs. He prodded his motives carefully to be sure that he wasn’t simply attracted to a curiosity, but the truth was far simpler than that. He found Fiona highly attractive as well as interesting. She didn’t have the model-like figure of most of the women he dated, nor the sophisticated manners, but her face was beautiful and natural and expressive, and her reactions were genuine. And he liked the fact that she didn’t seem in the least awed by his family name, and definitely wasn’t trying to win his affections. On the contrary, she seemed keen to dismiss him entirely.

He found himself grinning at the thought.
Well, she would see that the Parkers were not that easily discouraged. He was used to getting what he wanted, and it wasn’t outrageous to want to speak a little longer with this appealing Scotswoman. She might not be ready to accept a dinner invitation from him just yet, but there was more than one road to Rome, or whatever the expression was. He would have to read up on his history before he approached her again. For now, he could start by finding out a bit more about the elusive Fiona Buchanan.

Chapter Four

“You aren’t seriously saying that you turned down a dinner invitation from Colin
Parker,” Sarah said, half-admiringly, half-disapprovingly, as she gave her friend a searching look.

“I’m busy,”
Fiona said irritably, tying her hair back in a kerchief before she measured out twenty litres of water into a jerry can and mixed it into the cement in a wheelbarrow, stirring viciously. “Why would I take up a total stranger on a dinner offer after speaking to him for five minutes?  Worse than a stranger, somebody I know to be a class snob. And why did he even ask me? The whole thing feels like a set-up, like some sort of game or bet to see which of his mates can bring home the woman with the most working-class accent.”

Sarah was watching her curiously. “You’ve done this before, right?” she asked, referring to the cementing job that
Fiona had planned for the afternoon.

“I read up about it on
the internet,” Fiona said in an off-hand manner. “And glanced over a book on masonry at the Braeport library. It isn’t like it’s rocket science. Seriously, don’t you find it a bit bizarre the way he approached me?”

Sarah shrugged noncommittally. “He saw you speak and found you interesting. How else could he have dealt with trying to speak to you in person?”

Fiona surveyed the dark, porridge-like mixture in the wheelbarrow and checked the cement bag again to make sure that she had the proportions right. “I think it’s ready,” she declared, picking up two trowels and handing one to her friend. “Let’s do a trial piece of wall where it’s the most knocked-down. I suppose he could just have stayed talking to me there and then. No need to make a date of it.”

“That’s sort of how it works, the dating thing,” Sarah pointed out, eyeing the wet mixture on her trowel dubiously. “You meet somebody you think you like and you try to get to know them better. Didn’t you ever go on dates?”

“Of course I did,” Fiona said with a slight frown. “But never like that. Just with guys I’d known a long time and became close to, at school and uni. You know, classmates or workmates, people like that.”