While she found him pleasant enough, Mared knew she’d never feel love for Mr. Anderson. She simply thought him a proper match. Love rarely entered into these arrangements, she’d learned. It was a matter of properly aligning fortunes and mutual expectations.
Having thus convinced herself, it wasn’t until the wedding of Miss Clara Ellis to Mr. Fabian MacBride that the thought of Payton dug its way out of its grave and rose up from the dead to torment her like a bloody nightmare.
On that occasion, Mared arrived at the kirk, all smiles in the ice blue gown Anna had given her. She walked down the aisle to take her place among the other guests, smiling and greeting—Good afternoon, Mr. MacBain. How lovely yer bonnet, Miss Caraway.
The wedding ceremony was rather boring, Mared thought. There was no lively crowd, not like in the Highlands. This was a very stilted affair, in which people nodded approvingly, but no one sang out their heartfelt congratulations to the couple.
Afterward, at the wedding breakfast, which was served in a hall on Princes Street, Mared sat alone. The gentlemen she knew were in the company of their families or wives and were not free to flirt with her. As the breakfast ended and a celebration of sorts began, Mared spied Mr. Anderson, who had been quite solicitous and charming the night before. She made her way to him, but he seemed oddly shocked that she was in attendance when she met him. “Good morning, Mr. Anderson,” she said.
“Miss Lockhart?” He looked around, smiling nervously.
“Wasn’t the wedding bonny?” Mared asked. “I thought the bride particularly so.”
“Aye, she was indeed.” He licked his lips, his gaze scanning the crowd around them.
Mared smiled, cocked her head to one side, and tapped him on the arm with her fan. “Are ye quite all right, Mr. Anderson?”
“Ah…very well,” he said, seeming startled she would even ask. “Grand to see ye, Miss Lockhart, but if ye will excuse me, I must attend my grandmother.”
“Oh. Of course.” How odd, she thought. Mr. Anderson was always so hotly in pursuit of her, but now he nodded curtly and walked away.
Mared’s smile faded completely when he did not attend his grandmother, but a young woman Mared had seen a few times before. She suddenly had the very old and familiarly uncomfortable feeling that people were whispering about her. The hair stood up on the back of her neck as it used to do in the lochs when people would close their doors as she walked by.
So it was with great relief that she spied a familiar and friendly, albeit roguish, face in Hugh MacAlister, standing near the entrance in the company of two men. Mared walked across the room to him and tapped him on the shoulder. “Here I am, sir, the object of yer desire,” she teased him.
“What?” Hugh said sharply, turning around. His frown instantly turned to a smile when he saw Mared before him. “Ah then, look at ye, Miss Lockhart! How bonny ye are! I’d wager ye are the object of more than one man’s desire, aye?”
Mared laughed. “I’m very happy to see ye, Hugh. I could use a friend just now.”
“Ah,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back. “I would that I might stay behind and lend an ear, leannan, but I’ve another engagement and several ah…persons awaiting me there.”
“Ye are a scoundrel, sir!”
“That, lass, is quite well established,” he said with a wink. “Very well, then, good—”
“Wait!” she cried, realizing that he was indeed leaving her. “Ye donna truly intend to walk away just now? Please stay, Hugh. I am alone and feeling rather strangely reviled by a man I thought rather keen on me.”
“A pity,” he said, his smile gone. “But I canna stay. I am wanted elsewhere.”
She frowned petulantly at him. “I thought ye adored me. I thought ye came all the way back from Ireland just for me.”
Hugh surprised her by laughing. “Ach, lass, how na?ve ye are! Ye believed that?”
Mared blinked. Of course she didn’t believe Hugh had come back from Ireland for her, but she did believe he held her in some regard. Why else would he say all the things he’d said? Of course she didn’t believe he loved her, but certainly he held her in some esteem, for he’d said so, many times.
When Hugh saw in her expression that she did believe he esteemed her, he leaned forward and said bluntly, “Donna be a fool, Mared. That is what men and women do, aye? They flatter and they flirt, and they dance around the point of it all until one or the other is successful in taking the other to their bed.”
She blushed and snapped open her fan. “Perhaps that is yer manner of operation, but it’s no’ the way of a gentleman. I’ve had several gentleman callers in Edinburra, and no’ one of them has suggested such a thing!”
“Indeed?” Hugh asked and looked across the room to where Mr. Anderson was still speaking with the young woman. “And do ye think, then, that Mr. Anderson’s attentions to ye were in the course of building to an offer of marriage?”