“Brat!” Claire yelled at her sister, who was looking down at Nyssa as though she were her sworn enemy. Claire went to Nyssa to help her up and as she did so, she looked up at Trevelyan. “Help me,” she ordered him, but Trevelyan just sat there smiling, obviously fascinated by the scene.
“I am so very sorry,” Claire began as she helped Nyssa to stand. “Sarah Ann, I demand that you apologize this instant.”
Brat stood where she was, her face hard and unmoving.
When Nyssa was standing, Claire went to her sister. “Either you apologize—and explain yourself—or I’ll give you something to be sorry about.”
Behind them Nyssa’s laughter spilled out, and Claire turned to look at her.
“She has never been in a room with a woman prettier than she is,” Nyssa said.
Brat didn’t say a word, just kept glaring at Nyssa.
Claire looked at Trevelyan as though asking him for help.
Trevelyan shrugged. “You have your money and your sister has her beauty. Have you ever met an heiress richer than you?”
Claire looked at him as though he were insane. “What has this to do with money? My sister just hit someone and—”
She didn’t say any more because Nyssa walked past her and put out her hand to Brat. “I will do your face as I have done your sister’s,” Nyssa said softly. “I have a blue robe the color of your eyes and I have silk shoes with little mirrors sewn on them.”
Brat stood where she was for a few minutes, then, with her jaw still set, she followed Nyssa into the bedroom.
After that first episode, Nyssa and Brat became inseparable. Not that they liked each other, not that they ever said a kind word to each other. It was as though each didn’t dare allow the other out of her sight. Claire thought that Nyssa was amused by this game, but that Brat was deadly serious.
At first the animosity Brat showed toward Nyssa bothered Claire, but Trevelyan shrugged it off. “It entertains Nyssa, so it’s all right.” She didn’t understand his answer any more than she understood what was going on between Nyssa and Brat. Nyssa was nineteen, the same age as Claire, but the young Peshan woman acted much younger. She acted as though the very thought of responsibility might kill her. She told Claire that she meant to enjoy herself and that was all she planned to do in life.
Once Claire tried to talk to Trevelyan about Nyssa’s future, but Trevelyan wouldn’t discu
ss the subject. In fact the whole concept seemed to make him angry. “She’s not like you,” he half yelled at her. “Can’t you understand that other countries have different ways? You complain that America is different from England and England is different from Scotland. But you have no idea how different the rest of the world is.”
Claire didn’t know what she’d said to cause such anger in him, but this particular anger was the least of what she didn’t understand about him. Sometimes he looked at her with love and sometimes he looked at her as though he had no idea who she was. When he was writing he had an ability to concentrate that was almost frightening. Brat and Nyssa yelled at each other but Trevelyan would sit in the midst of them and seem as though he heard nothing. Once, when Brat and Nyssa began to fight over a particularly lovely red robe, Claire had to shake Trevelyan to get him to stop writing so he could negotiate between the two women. Trevelyan frowned, didn’t look up, and said, “When they tear it in half, they’ll be sorry. They’ll learn more from that than I can teach them.” He was, unfortunately, right.
On the morning of the fourth day, Oman handed Claire a letter. He said that a man on a lathered horse had brought it for her. Trevelyan turned away from his writing to look at her with great interest. As Claire reached out for the letter, she found that her heart was pounding. Had Harry heard what she was doing with Trevelyan? Was the letter from him?
“It’s from the Prince of Wales,” she said. Nyssa and Brat came out of the bedroom to watch her open the letter. Claire read it quickly, then looked up at Trevelyan. “The Prince of Wales has issued a royal warrant for MacTarvit whisky.”
“He wants to arrest whisky?” Brat asked.
Claire smiled. “No, the prince says that it’s the best whisky he’s ever had and he wants the world to know it.” Claire locked eyes with Trevelyan. “She won’t be able to throw him off the land now. Not if the prince wants the whisky.”
Trevelyan looked at Claire for a long moment. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “She won’t like that,” he said at last. “You’re interfering too much in her life.”
Claire turned away from him, for something in what he said and the way he said it frightened her. “Shall we go and tell Angus MacTarvit?”
“Yes, please,” Nyssa said. “We shall go now and you shall explain everything that you’ve done.”
Trevelyan gave a nod to Oman, and thirty minutes later the group was piled into one of the MacArran carriages. They were an odd assortment of people. Trevelyan was wearing the plaid, which she now knew was the laird’s plaid and which she again told him he shouldn’t wear. He replied that Harry’s kilts would be too short on him, the snideness of which was not lost on Claire. Nyssa was radiant in a golden brown robe that was heavily embroidered with a diamond pattern. Brat, not to be outdone by her enemy/friend, wore a blue robe and had flowers in her hair. Oman, of course, couldn’t have looked more strange. Only Claire was “normal” in her plain red wool dress.
She didn’t realize that she was looking at the group in the carriage as she feared the crofters were going to see them—as people from another planet.
Nyssa said something in Peshan to Trevelyan and he smiled.
Claire looked at Nyssa. “Translate please.”
Trevelyan answered because Nyssa had turned and looked out the window. “She said that of all of us, the contraption on your behind made you the strangest looking.”
“My bustle!” Claire said with indignation. “I’ll have you know that—” She stopped because everyone in the carriage was smiling, and Claire began to laugh too. She grinned at Trevelyan. “At least you aren’t dressed like George Washington today.”