“Wish I had,” Jock called out from over my shoulder.
I turned to glare at my annoying cousin, but his wide unrepentant grin had me smiling instead. “Fine,” I declared with a melodramatic sigh. “I shall endeavor to be joyful.”
“That’s my Kiera,” Trevor declared, swinging me around so sharply that my legs were lifted momentarily from the ground.
At a normal gathering, such behavior would be highly inappropriate, but at the Rutherford Hogmanay Ball it was a matter of course. I estimated that half the assemblage was already well on its way to being sotted, if the giggles and raucous laughter were anything to go by. Mr. Trumble and his dance partner were barely able to stay on their feet as they twirled drunkenly through the assembly, narrowly missing the other couples. It was impossible not to join in the good cheer.
As the waltz entered its last stanza, a cry went up from across the room. Trevor and I turned toward the sound, but were distracted as Uncle Andrew leaped up in front of the orchestra, where they were positioned on a dais in the corner of the room. The strains of the waltz slowly died away, and a murmur of excitement swept over the crowd.
“It’s nearly midnight,” he declared, lifting a small glass of whiskey. “Let’s toast the Old Year, and welcome the New Year in.”
Everyone scrambled to find their own glasses of the preferred Scots toasting beverage. Trevor reached out to grab two glasses from the tray of a passing servant and handed one to me. Jock and his dance partner joined us, along with our cousin Andy—Uncle Andrew’s oldest son and heir—and his fiancée, the aptly named Miss Witherington.
“What are you still doing here?” Andy asked our tall, dark-haired cousin. “Aren’t you our first-footer?”
“Nay. Not this year. Yer mam asked Rye,” Jock informed us in his Scots brogue, naming one of our other cousins, who had recently been widowed. Though educated as a gentleman, Jock refused to soften his accent. A fact that none of the rest of us had ever minded, but that aggravated his mother and older sister. “She thought he could use the good luck it might bring to him.”
We all nodded in agreement.
“First-footer?” the very English Miss Witherington asked in confusion.
“Aye. It’s an old Scottish tradition,” Andy explained. “The first person to cross the threshold of a home after the stroke of midnight on Hogmanay is the first-footer, and they can either bring good or ill fortune to the house. The luckiest are tall, dark-haired men bearing gifts.”
Her brow furrowed. “And the unluckiest?”
“Well, women, fair-haired men, and redheads are all regarded to be unlucky in varying degrees.” Andy grinned. “So it’s best to simply plan who your first-footer will be ahead of time to avoid any unhappy surprises.”
Miss Witherington scrunched her nose in a manner which I suspected she thought was endearing. “But isn’t that . . . well . . . silly?”
The rest of us shared the look of the long-suffering Scot faced with English ignorance.
“Nay,” Jock protested. “Ole Mrs. Heron in the village tells of the year she fell ill with the ague, her home flooded, and she lost two of her sons, all because she had an unlucky first-footer.”
Miss Witherington’s eyes narrowed skeptically.
“In any case, it’s a tradition,” Andy told her with a pacifying smile. “Much like your mistletoe and greenery, and the Yule log at Christmas. There’s no harm in following it.”
“I suppose not,” she hedged, returning his smile with one that didn’t reach all the way to her eyes. I suspected she was merely placating him. I wondered how much these Hogmanay gatherings would change once she was mistress of Clintmains Hall.
“Ten seconds to midnight,” Uncle Andrew announced, and then began to count us down as we all joined in. “Eight, seven . . .”
I couldn’t help but smile, feeling an unbidden surge of hope and anticipation in my chest that this new year would be better than the last. After all, last year I had celebrated Hogmanay quietly with my sister and her husband in their Highland castle, afraid to face the world following the scandal. And now I was welcoming in 1831 at a ball of all places, surrounded by family who loved me, despite my quirks, and facing down those acquaintances who still eyed me with suspicion. I found myself wondering where I would be a year from now.
“. . . three, two, one!”
A shout went up as everyone raised their glass and wished one another a Good New Year. I downed my tot of whiskey, feeling the warm, smoky liquid burn its way down my throat and into my stomach.