Juliana gasped.
“Dr. Alasdair Andrews,” breathed Rebecca.
“He of the auburn hair,” Juliana said.
“Green eyes!” Rebecca squeaked.
“Scottish burr.” Juliana smiled.
Arabella knew there was one more thing to show her friends.
“Alasdair!” She tugged on his arm and with a bewildered look on his face, he leaned down and she whispered in his ear, “Open Sesame.”
He grinned.
“Dimples!” Juliana and Rebecca shrieked simultaneously. Arabella gave Alasdair an impulsive kiss on the ear.
Alasdair shot a questioning glance at Arabella. He must think all three of them were Bedlamites.
“I’ll tell you later,” Arabella mouthed to Alasdair silently as she moved away from him to sit on a sofa and talk with Juliana and Rebecca.
Arabella cared not one whit that she was in Giles’ house in her plain gray woolen traveling dress, that she had pinned her own hair this morning and had not looked at it since then. Juliana and Rebecca were here, Juliana sitting on her right side and Rebecca on her left.
And Alasdair, her Alasdair was in the room with her.
“You must tell us, Arabella, when did you get married?”
“We have not heard one word of this! Does your mother know?”
Arabella now started to feel a little uncomfortable with her friends. What if Alasdair had no intention of marrying her, ever? She would be caught in the lie if ever she returned to her life in England. But if Alasdair didn’t want her, she would never have a life in England. Never.
“It is very recent,” she temporized.
“Is that why you don’t have a ring?” Juliana asked.
A ring. She didn’t have a ring. She had not thought of that.
“Perhaps you eloped,” Rebecca said thoughtfully.
“Yes,” Arabella faltered.
“So not a big wedding,” Juliana said.
Rebecca clutched her hand. “Oh, how romantic, Arabella. And he is Scottish just as you said, so did you elope to Scotland?”
“We were in Scotland,” Arabella said slowly.
She felt something cold and metal in her left hand. She kept it in her palm but pressed it with her fingers, to see what it was. It was a ring.
She looked at Rebecca, who smiled at her. She looked at Rebecca’s right hand and saw a red line around her pinky. A red line where a ring had sat until just a moment ago.
“Your fingers are so small. I think it will fit your ring finger,” Rebecca whispered in Arabella’s ear as Juliana talked about the elopement of Miss Sarah Lymington to a lieutenant in—now, which regiment was it?—and how they got lost on the road to Gretna Green.
And indeed, the ring did fit.
As Arabella settled herself with her friends, Alasdair met the Marquess and Marchioness of Painswick. He didn’t much like the look of the marquess, who seemed a vain and preening man. And the dark-haired and bejeweled marchioness was clearly taking very high doses of laudanum as her pupils were approximately a sixteenth of an inch in diameter and she seemed unaware of where she was.
Lord Morpeth introduced him to Mr. and Mrs. Swinton.
