Page 2 of Somewhere Along The Way (Mackinnon #3)

Her mother smiled, leaning closer to whisper, “That’s because you’ve been around my family.

Not all Highlanders are so unruly. Take your betrothed, for instance.

He’s quite the gentleman, even by English standards.

” Seeing the frown on her daughter’s face, she added, “Don’t be f orgetting that more than half of your blood is as wild as the Highlands where Colin and I were born.

Now smile, Bella, and try to look happy. ”

Annabella didn’t want to smile. Happy looks were for happy people, and all in all, this was a very negative day for her.

She didn’t want to be here in Scotland. She didn’t want to be attending this betrothal celebration.

And she most certainly did not want to be betrothed to anyone.

Not to any of the endless parade of men her father had considered back in London, and absolutely not to Lord Huntly, the man he had eventually decided upon.

Most assuredly she did not want to be betrothed to a Scot.

And what Englishwoman would? Here’s tae us and to hell with the English, indeed.

Annabella stole a look at the man she was destined to wed one year hence.

How could her father, a man she had always adored, have done this?

All five of her sisters were married to refined, smooth-speaking men, English men.

Men who would live in a civilized place like London, or Kent, or even York.

How well she could remember her sisters’ reaction upon hearing their father had promised his youngest and last daughter to a Scot:

“A Scot?” repeated Judith. “He must be daft!”

“How could Father be such a fool?” asked Jane.

Coming to her feet, Sara said, “Every unmarried duke in England has begged for Annabella’s hand. Why didn’t father settle on one of them?”

To which Margaret replied by asking, “Why is Father shipping her off to Scotland as if he couldn’t find a good English husband for her? And why would any Scot want an English wife? They don’t even like us.”

Elizabeth answered that one in her most pretentious Scottish brogue: “Because the deaf man will aye hear the clink o’ money.”

On any other occasion they would have laughed.

But this day was different. “I’m sure Father has his reasons, and to him it seems quite the thing to do.

It’s simply that men have such an odd way of looking at things,” Jane said, sliding her arm around Annabella.

“Still, I can’t believe he would do such a thing to his own flesh and blood. ”

And neither could Annabella.

Never could she have imagined her father would settle upon anyone for her husband other than a man from her own country, an Englishman. “But, Bella, the Scots are English,” her father said.

A point that caused her mother’s Scottish blood to run a little warmer. She sent the duke a peevish look. “No, Alisdair,” she said with perfect calmness. “The Scots aren’t English. They won’t ever be English any more than the English will ever be Scots.”

The duke looked skeptical—something he did a lot around his wife and daughters. “What do you mean, they won’t ever be English? They’ve been part of England for over a hundred years,” he said.

“They’re part of Great Britain, but that doesn’t make them English.” The duke opened his mouth as if to strengthen his position, but the duchess cut him off with a wave of her hand. “You’re bested and you know it, Alisdair. One man against seven women…”

“I manage to prevail, Anne,” he said.

“Yes, you do— occasionally .”

“Scot or English, we’re all one,” the duke said in his defense. “It’s the same with families.”

“Perhaps. As long as you don’t forget that the clan is stronger than the chief.”

“And don’t you be forgetting that I h’ae a bit o’ Scots blood in me.”

His wife said something that sounded like “ humph ,” then added, “Your Scots blood is too watered down with English tea to do you any good.”

“His blood isn’t watered down, it’s cold,” Sara said, glaring at her father.

Wishing she had the fortitude to say something like that, Annabella stiffened her spine and tried not to look beseeching as she said, “Why do I have to marry a Scot when none of my sisters did?”

The duke looked at Anne with a question in his eyes. “Should we tell her?”

“Tell me what?” Annabella asked. She looked past her father to where her mother was standing. “Am I being bartered to the highest bidder like a prize sow at the fair?”

“No, dear, you aren’t being bartered,” Anne said. “And don’t refer to yourself in such common terms.”

“Has Father gambled away our fortune at White’s?” Bella asked her mother. “Are we destitute? Is that it?”

The duke scowled. “I rarely go to White’s anymore, and when I do, it isn’t to gamble. More importantly, I am not a man to sell my daughter for thirty pieces of silver.”

“Thirty-one pieces, perhaps,” Elizabeth said.

It was the first time they found something to laugh about—everyone save Annabella, that is.

Refusing to be distracted by anything, not even humor, Annabella drove her question home. “Why are you and Father being so secretive?”

Anne sighed and looked at her husband, who looked as if he would rather be anywhere else at this moment than standing here in the library with his family. “I suppose we owe it to her,” he said.

“Owe me what?” Annabella almost shouted, but the words came out in a flustered, disjointed voice that made it sound as if she were having second thoughts. Before she lost all her nerve, she said hastily, “Do you intend to tell me, or tease me to death?”

“Do you want to tell her?” the duke asked his wife.

Anne looked at Annabella and shook her head. The perfect picture of wifely submission, she said in the meekest of tones, “No, dear, you go ahead.”

All hell was breaking loose in the back of Annabella’s mind—where she was imagining the worst—which was probably what prompted her to throw up her hands and say without thinking, “I’ve never had so many people talking circles around me.”

Her mother made a big to-do about straightening a few books on the bookshelf beside her, her cheeks suffused with bright red color. She did not look away until the duke cleared his throat and said, “It’s a bit complicated.”

Annabella lowered herself into the nearest chair. “Something tells me I’d better sit down.”

In a small, apologetic voice Annabella hardly recognized, her mother said, “I think I’ll join you.”

Distracted by the pillar of meekness her mother had suddenly become, Annabella found her attention momentarily diverted from the catastrophe at hand. She almost smiled at the novelty of it.

The duke took advantage of this unexpected lull and bolted for a finely made wine cellarette and opened it.

Taking out an elaborately gilded decanter inscribed burgundy and removing the cut spire stopper, he poured himself half a glass.

A second glance at his wife made him hastily fill it to the brim.

He finished that glass and half of another before he spoke.

“When I fell in love with your mother and wanted to marry her, her father wasn’t too keen about marrying his daughter to an Englishman, regardless of the fact that I had Scottish ancestors. ”

“He must have warmed to the idea,” Annabella said. Then looking suddenly horrified, she sprang to her feet and asked, “Don’t tell me you aren’t married.”

The duke laughed and regarded his youngest with loving fondness. “Of course we’re married.”

Relieved, Annabella sat back down as her father continued.

“Old Donald McCulloch agreed to the marriage, because he was a shrewd old buzzard and knew uniting his family with such an illustrious English family as mine was a wise decision. But he made one stipulation: If we had only one daughter, she was to marry a Scot.”

“You have six daughters,” Annabella put in.

“There’s more to it than that,” the duke said. “If we had several daughters, the youngest one had to marry a Scot.”

To be singled out to suffer by her very own grandfather was a fate she didn’t deserve, and she cursed the solitary event that would change the course of her life.

How unfair it was—but there was nothing she could do except ache for what might have been and hate the callousness of her unfeeling grandfather—which did nothing to endear anything connected with Scotland to her.

“Donald McCulloch is dead now. What difference does it make whom I marry?” Like a mouse in a trap struggling to free itself, Annabella felt her emotions go from anger, to desperation, and back to anger.

“You aren’t afraid of a dead man, are you?

” The moment she uttered the words her head flew up and her eyes widened.

She wondered if it was fear or anger that drove one insane, for surely she must be so to speak so to her father.

But if he was offended by her pinprick of a challenge, he took no notice.

“No, I’m not afraid of a dead man,” he said thoughtfully.

Then, shaking his head with disbelief, he added, “Although I do feel that if anyone could make it back from the hereafter to haunt me, old Donald McCulloch could. He was a superstitious man, a believer in bogeys and warlocks, kelpies and monsters. And all this was sprinkled with a daft streak.” The duke glanced at his wife, and seeing Anne wasn’t taking any of this too badly, he went on.

“You were born at midnight and Donald believed any child born in the wee sma’oors was destined to be different. ”

“Different,” Annabella repeated. Then as if it had suddenly become apparent, she added, “And he made certain that I would be different, by forcing you to such an agreement.” A sudden afterthought made her eyes widen.

“You don’t have to keep your promise,” she said meekly.

“He’s been dead for a long time. Probably no one remembers such a promise. ”

“He had it written into our marriage contract, so he could rest easy. If you don’t marry a Scot, Bella, we would be guilty of breaching the contract.”