Chapter 7
In front of the mirror upstairs, Elspeth had been delighted with the transformation Marina and Sandra had worked on her. She’d stared at the pretty girl reflected back and decided there would be no more slinking around in the shadows for her.
But as dinner approached, her courage ebbed, and she’d needed to summon every last scrap of willpower to force herself to go downstairs. What if everyone hated the changes in her appearance?
What if everyone liked them?
Somehow that seemed worse, an indictment of the person she’d been all her life.
She made it downstairs at the last minute and steeled herself to enter the drawing room, only to discover nobody paid her any attention at all. Marina’s father, a man she’d met once before, had arrived with a lady she didn’t know, and the air was alive with celebration.
“Elspeth, you missed the news,” Prudence said, coming up and passing her a glass of champagne. “Ugolino has brought his new wife to us for Christmas, without giving anyone the least warning.”
The Italian lady across the room was small and round, and dressed in expensive, stylish clothes. At her side, Ugolino was unmistakably enamored.
“How nice for him,” she said, both relieved and disappointed that she’d managed to sneak into the room unnoticed. “How did Marina take the news?”
“She was surprised, like all of us. But now she and Giulia seem to be getting on famously.” Prudence lowered her voice. “I did worry that Fergus might knock Ugolino down, when he wandered in as cool as a cucumber and announced the marriage. It was pretty clear that Marina was trying to hide her shock at having a new stepmother.”
Near the windows, Marina stood with her husband, her father, and her father’s bride. If she was still upset, she did a good job of hiding it.
Prudence cast Elspeth a quick glance, then another more comprehensive one. “You look nice. Have you changed your hair?”
Elspeth choked back a disbelieving laugh. A whole day of primping and preening, and that was the best Prudence could do? “I wanted to try something a little different.”
“It suits you. You should wear it like that all the time.”
Prudence drifted off to find Charles. The crowd shifted. Elspeth found herself looking straight at Brody Girvan, who regarded her with an unreadable expression on his hawkish face. She raised an unsteady hand to the tumble of loose curls Sandra had spent an hour arranging. Upstairs she’d loved the effect, thinking it made her look poised and sophisticated. Perhaps she was wrong about that. Perhaps she just looked absurd.
Brody strode across the room to her. “You look splendid, Elspeth,” he said, raising his glass in her direction.
She frowned. His tone contained an edge that she didn’t quite understand. “Marina has been giving me some advice.”
“God bless Marina,” he said and emptied his glass.
“Don’t…don’t you like it?” Then cursed herself for sounding so lily-livered. What did it matter if Brody approved or not? She hadn’t gone to this trouble for his sake, but for her own.
“Devil take me, of course I damn well do.” The detailed survey he made of her burned, and she hid a shiver of feminine awareness. Those assessing eyes didn’t miss a single inch of the newly transformed Elspeth Douglas. “But you can’t blame a man for regretting that you’re no longer his secret treasure.”
Her eyes rounded, as she struggled to make sense of that astonishing remark. Brody developed a habit of leaving her speechless. Marina had said she looked pretty, and something in Brody’s unwavering attention told her he agreed. The confidence that had faltered as she faced an audience began to revive.
“What do you—”
The rest of the question was lost as Ugolino clapped his hands to gain the crowd’s attention. “Grazie tante. Grazie a tutti. Troppo gentile. Grazie mille. Thank you for the warm welcome you have given to my beautiful bride Giulia and to me on this cold Scottish night.”
Elspeth hid a smile. Given what Prudence had said, Ugolino was putting a gloss on his reception when he arrived. Fergus must have been livid at the tactless way his father-in-law introduced the newest member of the family.
Ugolino continued. “Many years ago, Marina’s mamma introduced me to a charming English Christmas custom that I’d like to bring north of the border.” He nodded at the liveried Italian footmen—presumably the contessa’s servants—standing beside a large crate in the corner. Elspeth hadn’t noticed it before. “With much difficulty and copious correspondence, I arranged for this to be waiting in Glasgow when we arrived.”
She craned her head to see as the servants opened the crate to reveal white sheeting. When Ugolino stepped forward and flung aside the material, he uncovered nests of green leaves and white berries.
“Mistletoe…” Elspeth said at the same time as Marina spoke.
“Papa, what a wonderful gift.” Marina turned to Fergus. “It was a seasonal tradition in Mamma’s family home in England when she grew up. You hang it about the house, and if anyone is standing under it, they get a kiss. It makes for a lot of fun and silliness over Christmas.”
Fergus looked puzzled and not unduly impressed. “It sounds like a mad Sassenach notion to me.”
She darted forward