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Gillian’s parents stood there with Allie, waiting for the hosts to be seated, and she took her place next to them.

“Mother. Father.” She took her sister’s hand. “Allie.”

“Good evening, my dear,” her very proper mother said. “Your gown is lovely. You look quite beautiful this evening.”

“As do you, Mother.”

Indeed, she looked more like an older sister than her mother. Her hair, a lighter shade of brown more like Allie’s, was hidden under a filer and veil.

“Good eve,” her father said in his typical gruff tone. Gillian had hoped her acquiescence on the matter of Covington would have put him in a better disposition, but it mattered not. She’d resolved herself to enjoy the day, and enjoy it she would.

“Father.”

They sat when their hosts had done the same. She told her parents about her day, omitting everything about the Scot, of course, and the jittering in her stomach that refused to go away whenever she looked at him. She could not seem to stop thinking of what she’d seen in the garden last night and finally allowed Allie to take over the conversation.

He was seated not far from them. When he looked at her, the urge to look back warred with her instinct to turn away.

“Are you looking for someone?”

“Nay,” she said, much too quickly.

Her father’s eyes narrowed.

“Nay, I am simply in awe of how the hall has been transformed. Are you not as well, Father? It was quite enjoyable to help make the wreaths earlier.”

He grunted and picked up a piece of meat off the trencher he shared with her mother.

“John,” her mother said. “Your daughter asked . . . is it not lovely?”

“Aye,” he mumbled, clearly distracted.

And so it was. A lifetime of her mother’s wasted efforts.

“Dear,” her mother said, wiping her hands on the linen cloth that was being passed down. Had she even eaten anything? Likely not. There was little dignity in consuming a meal. “Have you met the earl’s sister? Her husband seems quite . . . zealous.”

Gillian looked up to where Emma and Lord Clave sat on the raised platform in front of them. Under the guise of whispering something to her, it appeared as if the earl was actually kissing his wife’s neck.

Scandalous.

“She is lovely,” Gillian defended her. “Her husband loves her very much.”

Her mother’s tsk was not unexpected. “That is hardly relevant.”

“Yes, Mother,” she said obediently, feeling her heart sink in her chest.

Allie opened her mouth to argue with her mother but closed it again at Gillian’s glance.

“They say Clave Castle can only be reached two times a day, at low tide. That it becomes an island all other times of the day,” her mother said.

“You’ve not been there?”

Clave was only one day’s ride south of Kenshire. And while she’d never been to the castle, she was surprised her mother had not visited it either.

“I have,” her father said between bites. “The 5th Earl of Clave was quite a man.”

He must have been for her father to speak on his behalf. He trusted few nobles and liked even fewer.

“And the son?” her mother asked.