Tidings of Great Boys (22 page)

“I’VE NEVER SEEN anything like this,” Carly breathed, pausing in the open double doors of the ballroom. “It’s like something
out of a movie.”

I couldn’t help but feel a glow of pride in the old place as I gathered up the packaging from the twinkle lights. According
to custom, all the rubbish had to be put outside in the dustbin before midnight on this last day of the year, so I needed
to keep up. At four o’clock on New Year’s Eve it was already dark outside, which only made the pretty lights more effective.
We’d decided to keep things fairly simple, given the late notice, and I had to admit that delegating the room design to Lissa
had been a smart move on my part.

“I wish they’d used this room in
The Middle Window
,” I said. “I can’t think why they had to film the dance scenes on a soundstage.”

“It’s about three hundred years out of period, that’s why.” Lissa directed one of Mr. Gillie’s grandsons—Ian, I think—on the
perfect placement of the last garland of lights. “This room looked too modern.”

“What, they didn’t have Adam ceilings in the fourteen hundreds?” I joked.

“Or Corinthian pillars, or parquet floors,” Lissa agreed. “But they suit us just fine. This is going to be the best party
ever.”

“You were right not to have cedar swags and rose towers,” I told her.

“Too much too late.” She nodded at Ian and he climbed down from his stepladder. “We could have flown the flowers in from Italy,
but then we’d have to worry about what to do with them afterward. Though I suppose the church ladies would love them.”

“I’m not so sure. There are two rival committees for decorating the altar. It could have gotten ugly.”

Lissa laughed. “There’d be rose petals everywhere and people would wonder how they missed the wedding.”

I smiled at the picture and reached out to grab Ian as he tried to slip out the French doors. “Not so fast, laddie. We still
need you.”

“But all the lights are up, miss.”

“And a fine job you’ve done for us. But tell me, do you know how to dance Strip the Willow?”

“Oh, no, miss.” Horrified, he edged closer to the doors. “Ye will no’ make me.”

“Och, aye, but I will. Where’s your granddad? I need him, too. We have five girls, so run and collect my mother and dad, and
Lissa’s parents in the kitchen. With Alasdair and your brother William, only your grannie will have to dance on the men’s
side.”

“Who am I to partner with, miss?”

I leaned in. “Which of us is the least scarifying?”

“The surfer girl, miss,” he whispered reluctantly. Then he brightened. “She’s verra handy with a screw gun, too.”

Twelve-year-olds were so easy to please.

When he’d fetched everyone and they’d straggled, laughing and chatting, into the ballroom, I plugged my iPod into the sound
system. “Okay, Americans, we’ll run through it in sections and then do the whole thing straight through, with music.”

Gillian and Shani groaned. “We learned this days ago.”

“I’ve forgotten everything.”

“Can’t we just sit this one out?”

“No, you cannot.” Dad took Mummy’s hand and herded Gabe and Patricia into line. “I’ll not have guests of mine made a laughingstock
because they cannot do a simple country dance.”

“Yeah, like calculus is simple,” Gillian muttered. “But you don’t see me doing it in front of an audience of experts.”

“It’s a Scottish thing,” Mummy said to her, “to test your mettle. Country dances are mathematical, you know. A series of interlocking
patterns. If you treat this one like a geometry problem, you’ll be fine.”

“Really?” Gillian looked so cheered by this odd way of looking at it that I could practically see that ferocious brain lasering
in on the steps as we went through them, parsing and analyzing each pattern as though it fit into some long algebraic equation.

I also saw that she executed them perfectly, as did Shani.

Hey, whatever works.

When they’d rehearsed to my satisfaction, we all adjourned to the sitting room, where Mrs. Gillie had rushed back to lay out
tea. A lovely wheel of Stilton, cold vegetables, and sliced roast, all designed to keep us going until the supper at ten o’clock.

“I shall be sorry to see young Carly leave us,” Mrs. Gillie whispered to me as she poured a mug of tea for me and laced it
with honey from Dad’s hives. “If not for her, I’d have been hard pressed to manage it all.”

Since she hardly even permitted my mother in her kitchen, this was high praise indeed. I saved it up to tell Carly later.

Lissa nudged me. “I vote for loading up plates and taking them upstairs. This is the most important part and we need all the
time we can get.”

I had to agree. “Just don’t, for goodness’ sake, spill anything on your dress once you get it on.”

She shuddered at the thought. “How much hot water do you think there is?”

With a stern look, I said, “Enough for a ten-minute shower for everyone in this house.”

“Ouch.” She looked pained. “Okay, message received.”

I loaded up my plate and stole a bunch of grapes out of the eighteenth-century silver soup tureen in the center of the table,
for good measure. Halfway across the entry hall, I spotted young Ian Gillie hesitating in the kitchen corridor.

“Ian? I thought you’d gone home to get dressed.”

“That’s just it, miss. We canna get out of the drive. It’s blocked.”

“Just open the gate. They need to be opened, anyway, before people start arriving.”

“It’s no’ the gate, miss. Granddad sent me to tell you. He cannot get the van past the reporters and the cameras.”

“What?” For a moment I couldn’t think what he meant. My brain was full of food and decorating and what I would wear and managing
hundreds of people and whether I’d remember the steps of Strip the Willow myself, if I could get Alasdair to partner me.

“Reporters, miss. There must be fifty of them. Granddad sent me back tae tell the laird.”

“Dinna bother the laird, Ian. I’ll deal with them myself.”

He grinned at me, as saucy as a robin in the rain. “Yer sounding like one of us again, miss, and losing that posh London accent.”

I squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll always be one of you, Ian. Wait for me here. I’ll be right back.”

I stuffed some roast and a bit of cheese in my mouth as I sprinted up the stairs. I couldn’t go out there as I was—in torn
jeans and a T-shirt. I had to go looking as they expected me to be. I yanked on a pair of 7 for All Mankind black velvet jeans
and slid into my new-this-fall Prada stiletto boots. On top went a winter white cashmere turtleneck sweater and a Chanel herringbone
riding jacket that I’d actually gotten on Portobello Road one Saturday morning on my way home from an all-nighter with some
girls from St. Cecelia’s. A quick brush of my hair, a swipe of lipstick, and I was ready to take on the news vans.

Alasdair stopped on his way up the stairs when he saw me coming down, and I was twice as glad I’d taken the time to change.
Admiration flared in his eyes, quickly banked down to the more appropriate level demanded by friendship.

Rubbish. If I had my way…

Focus.

“On your way out?” he inquired.

“Off to rout the invading horde.” I nodded at Ian. “Reporters are blocking Mr. Gillie’s exit.”

“Need some backup?”

“No, but I’d like it all the same.”

“Let me get my jacket.”

It was a half-mile walk to the gates, but Mr. Gillie was already waiting in the courtyard with the van. “Sure you’re up to
this, Lady Lindsay?” he asked me, accelerating down the drive. “I asked the lad tae speak to the laird.”

“Dad would read them a lecture and then invite them all in for a wee dram,” I said. “I’m more experienced at handling the
media than he is.”

“I have nae doot o’that,” Mr. Gillie said. “Here they are, then.”

Young Ian’s estimate had been spot on. There had to be fifty reporters, complete with cameras, microphones, vans, portable
transmission dishes, and an insatiable appetite for scandal.

I slid out of the van and walked toward the closed gates, thankful for Alasdair’s steadying presence behind me. If they rushed
me, I could only hope he knew enough self-defense moves for both of us.

“Gentlemen,” I greeted them with a smile. “You’re blocking our drive. D’you mind making way for my friends to leave?”

“She’s probably in the van!” one of them shouted, and they all began to yell.

“No one is in the van except two lads from the village. Now please move out of the way or I’ll have to call the local constable
to remove you.”

“Lady Lindsay, we had a local tip that the Princess of Yasir is a guest here. Is that true?” asked a man who couldn’t have
been any older than Alasdair. He wore a huge gray parka, though the day was mild.

“No. No one by that title exists, to my knowledge.”

“So can you confirm that Shani Hanna is or is not married to the Prince?”

“If her life were any of your business, I would tell you that no, she is not.”

“Then how do you explain the video that aired on
London Calling
?” A woman in a fabulous camel hair coat held her microphone out through the wrought-iron bars of the gate.

I laughed for the benefit of the camera, and tossed my hair back. “Have you people never heard of artistic license? The band
took a random clip out of something larger, obviously, and made a nice little headline for you—as well as a career-making
music video for themselves. I’d hardly take it seriously.”

“We interviewed the band earlier today,” the woman said. “They say they know you.”

I shrugged. “Sure. The guitarist, Anna Grange, is a friend of mine.”

“And you didn’t have a problem with her making a video about another friend of yours? You were very public earlier this year
on American celebrity sites, being seen with Miss Hanna. And the Prince, I might add.”

“Whether I had a problem with it is hardly relevant. They made the video. They’ll make another one using someone else. It’s
the nature of the beast, you know?” I grinned at her, two chums working the media for different reasons.

Which she promptly shot down with her next question. “Is the prince aware that your friends made a video that’s essentially
about him?”

“I don’t think Prince Rashid watches
London Calling
.”

Another reporter mashed himself up against the railing and stuck his digital recorder in my face. “Is it true the Prince is
coming here for Hogmanay?”

I laughed again, in sheer incredulity. “You’ve got to be joking. The man is in Yasir, as far as I know.”

“Rumor has it the Yasiri royal flight left there this morning with the prince on board.”

“Perhaps he’s spending the New Year in California,” I said. “Now, I really must wrap this up and insist that you move out
of the way.”

“Lady Lindsay—”

“No, no more questions. Move out of the way, please.”

I leaned on the gate until they were forced to move back, and Mr. Gillie maneuvered the van neatly into the gap, forcing them
back even further. When he finally got through and trundled off down the road, Alasdair and I pulled the gates back into place.