Christabel MacNab, Countess of Appin, hooked her gloved hand around her dashing husband’s elbow and smiled with pleasure as she surveyed the crowded ballroom spread out before her. Winter greenery decorated the room and added a fresh scent to the air. Edinburgh’s best dance orchestra played the latest waltz, and sparkling chandeliers cast golden enchantment across the cheerful throng.
Quentin looked spectacular in his Highlander garb, an inevitable reminder of that fateful Christmas ball five years ago, when she’d shaken off Neil Maxwell’s baleful influence and even better, she’d discovered that her marriage was a love match after all. Since then, she and Quentin had established a good and purposeful life at a thriving Appin. A life so busy that this was her first Christmas trip to Glen Lyon since her wedding, although there had been plenty of vis
its at other times. Hamish and Emily and their children were family, and time had only strengthened the immediate affinity she’d felt with the Douglases.
“Kit, bella, how wonderful to see you here!” Marina, Lady of Achnasheen, exclaimed in her exuberant way, as she rushed up on the arm of her imposing husband, Fergus Mackinnon. A flurry of embraces ensued. “That color is perfetto on you.”
“Thank you,” Kit said. The rose pink gown was one of her favorites, and she was delighted that her hair had grown enough for the elaborately curled hairstyles now in vogue. The countess crop had enjoyed a brief popularity after her wedding, but longer hair had become the mode. “You look as beautiful as ever.”
“It’s been much too long since we’ve seen you, per pietà,” Marina went on.
Fergus laughed down at the dark-eyed, half-Italian beauty. “Do ye no’ recall that we visited Appin in October, mo chridhe?”
Marina flashed him a brilliant smile. “It feels like a long time. I want to paint a portrait of the piccolo Connor while he’s still a toddler.”
“You’ll have to catch him first,” Quentin said drily, a wealth of love for his mischievous son warming his wry humor.
“And he’s fiendishly fast.” Kit’s hands came to rest on her rounded stomach. She was expecting another baby in March. “I haven’t a chance of keeping up with him these days.”
“Perhaps ye should enter him in the Derby,” Fergus said with a laugh, putting his arm around his wife.
“Wait until you see my new colt, and you’ll regret mocking my ambitions,” Kit retorted.
So far, her dream of breeding a champion hadn’t eventuated. Neil had run the once-famous Appin stables down so badly that it had taken years of work to bring them back to standard. But under Laing’s supervision, this last crop of foals showed definite promise, and one particular bay had the fire in his heart and the strength and speed to encourage her hopes.
“Are ye sharing racing tips, Kit?” Diarmid had been waltzing with his pretty blond wife Fiona, but now they stopped to join the conversation. “Och, I won a fortune on that outsider ye recommended last September.”
Quentin snickered at her side. “My wife made excellent use of her time as a stableboy.”
“Nothing like a bit of practical experience to back up all my reading,” Kit said pertly.
“Well, dinnae waste any inside knowledge on Fergus here,” Diarmid said, digging his childhood friend in the ribs. “He’s already far too rich for his own good.”
Fergus laughed again, as Fiona shook her head in sham disappointment. “It’s Christmas, my love. Can’t you laddies be nice to one another just once a year?”
“Fergus would think we were sick if we were nice to him,” Hamish said in his bass rumble from just behind Kit. “He’d sit down in a gloomy corner and fret himself into a decline.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Emily said with a laugh. Looking magnificent in a spangled silk dress that displayed her lush bosom to advantage, she held her husband’s hand. “They turn into a bunch of schoolboys when they get together. That will never change.”
“You’re lucky you married a sensible man, my love,” Quentin said. His green-gold glance worked the same devastating effect on her pulses as it had all those years ago, when she was desperate to hide her penchant for the laird’s spectacular nephew.
She arched supercilious eyebrows. “Oh, and is that what I did?”
Although he was right. The gossip out in the wider world had been awful, once the story of her disguise and rushed marriage broke. During their early years together, there had been many occasions when she’d appreciated Quentin’s steady temperament and steadfast love. Luckily the worst of the tattle had faded over time. And of course, the people they loved, most of whom were here tonight, had never given a fig for the nasty talk.
“Aye, had you forgotten?” He leaned forward and kissed her in a way that nobody would ever describe as sensible.
By the time he raised his head, her knees were buckling. That hadn’t changed either.
She drifted back to the real world to hear Hamish and Diarmid discussing Neil Maxwell’s recent misfortunes. “Did ye hear he was tossed out of the Tories for graft and corruption? I’d say his political career isnae going anywhere,” Diarmid was saying.
Once the mere mention of Neil’s name would have been enough to set Kit trembling, but these days, the Countess of Appin and her dashing husband had nothing to fear from her cur of a stepbrother. She held so much evidence of his thefts at Appin that Neil knew coming within a hundred miles of her was asking for trouble.
“Neil bloody Maxwell is the last person we need in government,” Hamish snorted.
“Don’t spoil our Christmas party with talk of that horrid man,” Emily said. “Especially as this is our chance to enjoy ourselves free of parental duties. Tomorrow we’ll do nothing but keep our children out of mischief. You know what they’re like when they’re all together.”
“Aye, I do,” Hamish said with a longsuffering sigh, although the spark in his eye hinted that he intended to encourage any high spirits that might be afoot.