Marina came forward with a concerned expression. Hamish summoned a smile. "Don’t worry. I’m not going to challenge Fergus to pistols at ten paces."
"Porca miseria, I’m so cross with him, I don’t think I’d mind if you shot him. But that’s not it. It’s Emily."
Hamish stopped stone still. Foreboding as sharp and heavy as an ax crashed down upon him. "What is it?" He looked past Marina to where Fergus stood watching them with a stern expression. "If Fergus said anything more to upset her, I will damn well shoot him."
Fergus stepped closer, and Hamish realized that the sternness was worry. "She’s no’ here, Hamish."
"Where is she?"
Marina made a helpless gesture. "When Rory started that stupid outburst, she ran out. I wanted to follow her, but Fergus said—"
Now he wished he’d given Rory the beating he deserved. "I think Fergus has said quite enough for one night," Hamish retorted, his resentment stirring anew. "Which way did she go?"
Marina pointed to the door leading back into the rest of the house. At least Emily wasn’t out in the cold. With October’s arrival, the mild weather had become a memory, and now it had started to rain. "That way." She paused. "She looked upset."
"Thank you."
"Hamish, I probably havenae helped," Fergus began, looking uncomfortable. Apologies never came easily from the managing ass, although since his marriage, at least he was prepared to make amends now and again.
Hamish shot him an angry look. "Probably?"
"Hamish, he meant well," Marina said.
"What does that matter?" Hamish sighed. He was too worried about Emily to hang about arguing with this arrogant bastard he used to call a friend. "Hell, what do I care? Right now, you and your unsolicited and uninformed opinions can go to blazes, Fergus. I need to find my wife."
Without another word, he strode out of the ballroom and entered the hall. He brushed off the guests who approached him and collected a lamp. He cursed the fact that Lyon House was so large. It would be quicker if he asked Diarmid and Fergus to help. They knew the house almost as well as he did. But he had no idea where the Mactavishes were, and he didn’t trust himself to be civil to Fergus.
Hamish conducted a swift search of the ground floor, interrupting a couple of lovers’ trysts but finding no trace of Emily. He checked down in the kitchens, but nobody in that hive of activity had seen the lady of the house.
Unless Emily had run outside, and as it had started raining, he doubted that she had, she must be upstairs. Their rooms were the most obvious place for her to take a wounded heart.
But when he went up, she wasn’t in their suite. Guests staying over for the ceilidh were using the other bedrooms. She wouldn’t seek refuge where she might be interrupted.
Would she venture as far as the servants’ rooms in the attic? Surely not.
With every moment, his turmoil worsened. He was sickly aware that this latest mess was all his fault. He should have let Emily find her feet as Lady Glen Lyon, before he threw her to the wolves that were his friends and neighbors and kinfolk. How he cursed his impulse to show his lovely wife off to the world. He’d have been better off keeping her to himself.
What the devil would he do if Emily decided to go back to London? What if she decided that she didn’t like Scotland and the Scots – and one Scot in particular, the boneheaded dolt she’d so reluctantly married?
Nausea soured his stomach at the thought of losing her now, after these golden, glorious days. If she went, he’d follow her south. He wouldn’t stay here without her. But if she decided that she’d had enough of him as well as his country, she’d break his heart.
His mood growing grimmer by the minute, he kept searching. Finally he reached the gallery, stretching ahead dark and silent.
"Emily?" he called as he started down the long room.
He advanced a few more steps, but he already knew she wasn’t here. The painted eyes of his ancestors stared down at him in disapproval. He’d brought the world’s most marvelous woman into the Douglas family, and now it looked like he was about to lose her.
Perhaps Rory was right, and he was a disgrace to the clan.
His shoulders slumping, he turned to go back downstairs. Then he stopped.
What a fool he was. He knew just where Emily was. Confound it, he should have guessed from the first.
If she was as upset as he feared she was, she’d want to be alone. There was one place in all this huge house where that was guaranteed.
Sure of himself at last, Hamish strode down the length of the gallery until he reached Granny Phyllis’s cabinet of curiosities. There he paused, sucked in a deep breath, told himself not to muck this up, and opened the door.