I glower Isla’s way, not because of her idle threats but because it’s clear Holland and I can’t continue with an audience.
“Excellent,” Isla says as Holland reaches the door. “I suppose we’ll see you at supper,” she adds, glaring back at me. As my sister moves to the side to allow Holland to pass, I call out her name, and she turns.
Holland reluctantly turns. “What?”
Her expression is blank. I suffer the sting of it as I settle myself back against the desk in a lounging sort of arrangement.
“You might want to alter your form of address, given your concerns,” I drawl. “You said yourself, you don’t want to give anyone at Kilblair anything to gossip about.” Contempt drips from my tone. How does the saying go? Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb?
“You want me to call you duke?” she replies as her mouth flattens into a mutinous line.
“Your grace is the correct address.”
My sister’s humourless laughter floats in from the hallway. I’m heartened to see none of us is truly entertained.
“As you like, your grace,” Hollands murmurs, sliding me a look that perfectly embodies her contempt.
But she’s to be pitied. Because I mean to keep her. And if that makes me like my father, then he’d better save me a seat next to him in hell.
30
Holly
One Uber. There is exactly one Uber in the village. And apparently, he’s on the way to the train station in Inverness, which is a ninety-minute drive away, to pick up his brother. I think this must be what it felt like to live in the 1800s. It’s a fifteen-mile walk from the castle to the village, so Chrissy said, but that’s from the entrance gate, not the kitchen door. There are cabs, of course, but they come from a nearby town. So I may as well wait until the guy with the Uber comes back. Meanwhile, I guess I’ll just order another of these, I think, waggling my glass to catch the attention of the bartender. A woman of indeterminable age and improbable hair colour.
I wonder if I’d look good with pink hair. I guess it would match my cheeks when I’m around Alexander.
Ah, Alexander. That ass. That frustrating, sexy, solid muscled ass. How did we go from I want you to give us a chance, my mind intones in its approximation of his deep baritone to, you may refer to me as your grace?
And you may kiss my ass.
I drain the remains of my beer because there’s a reason I’m drinking alone in the village pub. And that would be one Alexander Dalforth.
What have you got to lose Holland?
Respect. My self-respect. Other peoples.
And my heart.
“Another, hen?” The bartender, upon closer inspection, seems to be around my age.
I nod half-heartedly. I don’t feel like being a fluffy, happy hen today.
“You don’t look too sure.” The woman’s worried-looking eyebrows ride a little on her forehead. I don’t mean her eyebrows are especially worrying. I mean, they’re fierce, but it’s more that she looks a little worried for me. “Stella again, was it?”
“Yeah,” I say with a sigh. “I don’t have the brainpower for inspiration.”
I really don’t know what I’m doing here, other than I had to get out of the castle after Isla seemed to think she’d rescued me from her wicked brother’s clutches. In a way, I suppose she did save me. She saved me from being tongue fucked senseless.
So I guess she saved me from myself because the good Lord knows I have no self-control when it comes to her brother. Even when his ass-holey attitude raises its head in response to being thwarted.
To me leaving with Isla.
To me not listening to him.
To me not giving in.
We are unsuited in so many ways, yet he’s the only man who’s ever made me feel like I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.
So to speak.
I just need to make it clear to him I’m not interested.
Going. So going. But only temporarily today when I’d hitched a ride into the village with wee Sophie, who was heading home after work. I thought, well, I didn’t know what I thought at that point. I just needed to get away. So I’d bought cake and coffee in Kilblair’s only café, but when the woman who runs the café started to give me the stink eye that I thought I should find somewhere else to go so she could close up. Which left me the small grocery store or one of two pubs as the only places open.
“A half of wife beater, it is,” the bartender says, pulling out a fresh half-pint glass from underneath the bar.
“Wife beater?” I repeat, taking a look at the logo on the draft beer tap. Stella Artois. “Because the logo has a white background like a T-shirt?” I know, it’s a stretch—like cotton, ha—but it’s the only thing I can come up with.