‘I want you to follow your heart.’
‘And it’s taken you all day to think it through? Where have you been?’
‘Ah, well… this morning I—’
‘Evenin’ young yins,’ Seth called from the street. ‘You’ll be missing your own ceilidh at this rate, Atholl. You’re needed to introduce the band.’
Atholl spun round to face Seth. Beatrice didn’t see the effort it took for him to break away from her and greet his old friend. She did see the polite, if terse, nod of his head before he turned back to her to offer his crooked arm with a resigned sigh. ‘Shall we go in? This is your last night in Port Willow, after all. You should dance, and taste the whiskies and be happy.’
As she passed through the little gate from the inn’s garden, gripping his arm, Beatrice resolved to do as Atholl had said. He was telling her to not complicate things, and that tonight was all they had left and he wanted her to enjoy it, so she would.
They weaved through the rows of chairs lining the street. The inhabitants of Port Willow had all done as they were asked and brought out their own chairs and tables and the whole scene resembled a royal jubilee street party.
Seth, dressed in an ancient-looking kilt and tweedy jacket and still wearing his faithful green woollen beany, held the inn door open for her to pass through and Atholl released her arm as she walked in.
‘Save a Gay Gordons for me, Beatrice,’ Seth said with a twinkle. ‘There may be more lassies here than ever before, thanks to Atholl’s crafty women, but there’s still too many laddies and no’ enough lassies. It was ever the way at Port Willow,’ he added dramatically.
‘You cannae call themmycrafty women, Seth,’ Atholl warned with a droll smile. ‘They’re our crafting holiday patrons.’
‘Well, whatever we’re calling these bonny English lassies, I hope they’re ready for a night’s birling on the dance floor.’ Seth waggled his eyebrows and headed for the bar where Kitty was ladling a bright red drink from a large cut glass bowl into cups and handing them out to a gathering crowd.
Now that Beatrice could see the whole room, her lips parted and her jaw fell. Atholl watched her expression from by her side.
She’d seen it all earlier, of course. She and Kitty had pushed the chairs to the outside of the room and hefted most of the tables out into the street in order to clear a makeshift dancefloor. The decorations she and Kitty had strung across the ceiling still looked festive and bright but now the room was swirling with dancing spotlights from the low stage the ceilidh band had rigged up earlier, and the room was packed, a patchwork of swishing tartan in every colour. Standing here and there were local women in white frocks and visitors wearing the smartest clothes in their suitcases, some looking underdressed in jeans and jumpers but everyone smiling and excited. Mrs Mair stood at the bar, her sleeves rolled up.
‘No’ bad, eh?’ Atholl said, proudly, and Beatrice had to agree. ‘Wait here,’ he said, close to her ear, and he was gone, pushing through the crowd.
Over the sounds of the crowd and the chinking of glasses Beatrice heard the crackle of a microphone and Atholl’s voice running smooth like water in a burn.
‘Welcome, friends, to The Princess and the Pea and another Harvest Home.’
The cheer startled Beatrice. This crowd were ready to party.
‘Tonight I must thank the Garleton Band who’ll have you dizzy and puffin’ by midnight if previous years are anything to go by.’ Another cheer. The drummer raised his sticks in approval. ‘I have other folk to thank, too. Two special guests. Kitty Wake, who returns to us from her university in the north. Thank you for finding your way back to us. We’ve all missed you.’
Beatrice had to stand on tiptoe to peer over the heads to see Kitty, ladle in hand over the punch bowl, shyly accepting the applause, looking desolate as the crowd clapped and hooted.
A quick scan around the room revealed no sign of Gene who, if he were here, would tower head and shoulders above the crowd. Beatrice felt herself shrink inwardly. She’d been responsible for hurting this kind, generous woman and she had to fix it somehow but how could she do that without meddling even more?
Her attention was called back to Atholl’s voice at the sound of her own name being spoken and she found a break in the crowd where she could see his face.
‘And I must thank the bonny and brave Beatrice Halliday, who came to us from far away and has found a home here, warmed our hearts and made us wonder how we ever lived without her.’ He was looking straight at her and the crowd parted. She stared back.
Atholl spoke on, his lips close to the microphone and neck lowered as though he were talking only to her. ‘You and Kitty are responsible for helping us host the biggest Harvest Home celebration Port Willow has seen this half century. So please join me in a toast of our gratitude to Kitty and Beatrice, thank you, and haste ye back.’
‘Haste ye back,’ the crowd called as glasses swung and whisky splashed and a hundred pairs of eyes fell upon Beatrice approvingly.
Atholl surrendered his microphone and walked through the crowd towards Beatrice who glanced around her, wondering if anyone else had the sensation that time was somehow slowing down and he was moving towards her as if through water, his kilt swishing and eyes sparkling.
She heard the slow tap of a cymbal and a broad Scottish accent declaring, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, please take your partners for a St Bernard’s Waltz,’ and she was in Atholl’s arms and being spun to the outer edge of the dancefloor as the crowd divided into a circle of paired dancers and the whisky-supping spectators on the periphery.
She caught the eye of Cheryl at the bar. She was dressed from cleavage to knee in gold sequins and surely the most glamorous being the patrons of The Princess and the Pea Inn had ever encountered. Jillian was beside her in a glittering black dress that hugged her contours. She was accepting two glasses of punch from Kitty. Behind them in the queue stood a row of fishermen with scrubbed faces, uncomfortable in their shirt sleeves, every one of them gaping at Cheryl and Jillian and thanking their lucky stars for their arrival in the village, all of which the Bobby Dazzlers pretended not to notice, not until later in the evening anyway. Cheryl was winking at Beatrice and nodding her head towards an oblivious Atholl, making Beatrice grin back in response.
There was no point protesting. She and Atholl were the talk of The Princess and the Pea, obviously, and to be fair, it was probably for good reason. They all knew Atholl had carried her home from the coral beach on Friday afternoon and they’d both walked in late yesterday evening from the But and Ben, and they’d drawn their own conclusions. The silversmithing ladies from Sussex had seen it all too and it had fuelled a whole evening’s slightly jealous gossiping.
While the Bobby Dazzlers had set about her hair and make-up earlier that afternoon Beatrice had tried to explain that Atholl thought she’d be better off with her husband and that he’d made his position perfectly clear, she was a holidaymaker here and nothing else, they had laughed and raised their perfect HD brows and told her not to be so soft. Oh well, they’d all finally see tomorrow morning when she checked out and her holiday was over. There was nothing going on between her and Atholl.
She found her voice as the musical introduction ended, ‘Atholl, I don’t know how to do this dance!’
