some of the wild people
that run in the woods, and know
nothing about accomplishments!
Joanna Baillie
The Election, A Comedy
Everyone melted away after the meeting, leaving Anna, Elspeth, and Brando to track down the signup sheet and help the Macaras put the chairs back in place. The three of them left the inn together and found Connal waiting for them outside.
Arms folded across his chest, he stood braced against one of the empty outdoor tables in the courtyard, and he was brooding. There was no other word to describe the way he scowled down at the gray flagstones furred around the edges with soft green moss.
“So you haven’t forgotten us after all?” Elspeth stopped in front of him and poked him in the chest with her index finger. “Over your snit, are you?”
“I do not snit,” he retorted, but then his eyes kindled with humor in response to Elspeth’s smile, and he straightened away from the table with his trademark athletic grace. “I may huff a little now and then. But I promised you a ride, so forgive me for making you think I’d forgotten.”
“I told Elspeth I’d take them home,” Brando said.
“I pass the museum anyway, and you’ve got the Volvo to tow away.”
They were of a height, their eyes level. Brando’s hair was longer and redder with a deeper curl than Connal’s dark mahogany that was mostly hidden beneath his hat. Brando was bulkier, his muscles bunched and thick where Connal’s were hard and lean and elegant, but at that instant, it was Connal who gave the impression of wildness below the surface, a force not quite contained. Neither seemed willing to compromise on another thing. Brando stared at Connal a while longer before he slid a look at Elspeth.
She shook her head at him. “Be an adult, Brando. Play fair.”
His jaw tightened then relaxed. “Aye, fine.” Raising both eyebrows, he tipped his head in a gesture of surrender and held his hand out to Connal with a sigh. “I meant no insult to Moira in there. I hope you know that.”
Connal studied the hand Brando held out, then he stepped forward and gave it a cursory shake.
Brando clasped his forearm, holding him in place. “No hard feelings, right?”
“So long as word doesn’t get out that I’m directing.” Connal’s voice was gruff.
“We’ll keep it close among ourselves.”
“You don’t know what the paparazzi are like. But if I’m going to suffer through this, you’re going to suffer with me. I’ll need an assistant director. Someone I can count on once I have to turn control over.”
“Me?” Brando shook his head and stepped away. “Aw, no, mate. That’s where I bow out.”
“You do it, or I won’t. You never gave me the option of bowing out.” Turning his back on Brando without waiting for an answer, Connal offered Elspeth his elbow and supported her as they crossed the courtyard to walk the short distance down the side road to where he’d left the Audi. Brando, striding beside Anna, muttered something beneath this breath that didn’t sound in the least bit flattering.
It wasn’t until Connal had dropped them at the museum that Anna was able to ask Elspeth the questions that had been bothering her since the meeting. “What was all that about between Connal and Brando? And why didn’t you tell me Brando owned the hotel? I thought he was the local handyman.”
“Handyman? Och, no.” In the foyer beneath the glittering chandelier, Elspeth stopped and laughed. The sound echoed through the empty house and raised the temperature as if the heat had kicked on in welcome. “Brando has no family left here,” Elspeth said, “so he likes to make himself useful. His parents were killed coming up from Edinburgh in the rain one night when he was twelve, and his sister raised him by herself before she ran off and married a man from Cornwall. A friend of Connal’s as it happened, which is why there’s always been a bit of tension between those two. Brando was only nineteen then, and Janet wanted him to move along with her, but he wasn’t past his rebellious streak, and he felt like that would have been letting Connal run him out of town. Instead, he worked his way through culinary school in London and came back to turn the family farm into a smart hotel. Small but posh and trendy, and he’s making a name for himself with the restaurant. Just opened a bakery in Callander, too. Braes Bread right there on the High Street, in case you noticed it when you passed through.”
Anna remembered it well. “I picked up a pasty there. It was delicious, and I can’t believe he bakes on top of everything else.”
“There’s not much that man can’t do, and that’s the truth. Not to mention looking fit to eat himself in his kilt, don’t you think?”
“I haven’t thought,” Anna lied primly, and she and Elspeth both laughed at that as they headed off to the kitchen and spent the evening over the volunteer signup sheet.
Anna’s head ached by the time Elspeth had given her the rundown on everyone who’d offered help. It was impossible to remember who was in the habit of overestimating their abilities, who was going to be more trouble than they were worth, and who would do their own share and more. She wrote it all down and promised herself she’d memorize it and destroy the notes.
“Rhona’ll be your biggest problem,” Elspeth said. “Her and those daughters of hers, and Erica MacLaren. They’re all thick as thieves and slick as snakes. Now that they know Connal will be directing, you won’t be able to turn around without finding them underfoot.”
“Can they act, at least?”
“I’ve no idea, but mark my words, roles in the play won’t be the only juicy bits Rhona has her eyes on.”
Anna choked back a laugh. At the same time, the suggestion left an uncomfortable tightness in her chest.
She had no business letting it bother her.
It should have been Brando she was thinking of as she drifted off to sleep that night beneath the down comforter with the starlight sifting through the mullioned window. He was the one who’d been nothing but kind to her. He was considerate of Elspeth and intelligent and hardworking and, Elspeth was right, he did look delicious in a kilt.
So why was it Connal who raised her temperature, as if the comforter were snuggling her deeper into its folds the moment she thought of him?
Really, it was ridiculous to let herself think about either man—or anyone here in the glen. She was leaving in a month. Going home. Wherever home would turn out to be.
The thought brought another moment of tightness to Anna’s chest, and this one was harder to will away. Her entire life was so uncertain, and while there would be other chances for her if the festival failed—she would create other chances for herself—she didn’t want to let Elspeth and the village down. She didn’t want to let Moira down. She had to make it a success. For everyone.
She needed to stop thinking about Connal and concentrate on the job at hand. Focus. It was time to reaffirm the three-step program she’d set out for herself when Henry had left her a month before the wedding.
One, she wasn’t going to let any man limit or decide her future ever again. Two, she was going to carve out a successful career and a place for herself in the world—on her own terms without setting aside her values to get ahead. And three, once her future was secure, she would marry a man she loved, one who would be a true partner in every aspect of her life, without all the arguments and uncertainty that had defined her parents’ marriage.
Just because she’d failed twice at the first step, and let that failure derail the second, didn’t mean it wasn’t a solid plan. She needed to learn from her past mistakes. She wasn’t going to become her mother, brushing things aside for the sake of appearances, letting men take away her choices instead of standing up to do what was right.
Anna had been about Moira’s age the first time she’d learned that lesson, and seeing the way Connal had fought to protect Moira had been a raw reminder. A pageant judge had tried to touch her backstage, and her mother had told her not to overreact, to keep quiet and use it to her advantage. She’d promised to stay with Anna every moment if Anna would stick with the pageant, but Anna had refused. Refused not only to return to the stage that night, but also to compete in any other pageants. Her mother’s arguments hadn’t swayed her, so she’d stopped having the pageant experience in common with the female members of her family. She’d stopped being one of the three beautiful Cameron sisters. She’d stopped belonging in her mother’s world the way Margaret and Katharine belonged.
In self-defense, she’d become her father’s daughter. That hadn’t done her any favors with her mother either. Or her sisters.
The first time Anna had mentioned law school, years later, Ailsa had stood up from the breakfast table and carefully smoothed her skirt. “Ignore my advice if you want to,” she’d said, “but cutting off your nose to spite your face won’t make you happy in the end. Relying on your brains isn’t going to get you half as far as you think it will, my girl. You’ll only end up working three times as hard as any man, and when it comes time for a promotion, you still won’t be the one to get it. The world is a man’s place if you don’t use every tool you have. And the Lord didn’t give you a face like yours so you could waste it.”
“How did you get so cynical? When did you ever try to compete with a man in the first place?” Anna had retorted, kicking her legs under the table and watching as her mother slammed down a cookie sheet and the big, blue mixing bowl she only used to make Elspeth’s sweet oat biscuits. “Upset oaty biscuits,” Anna’s father had always called them, because they meant that Ailsa was upset enough to overlook the calories in favor of the comfort.
Anna remembered waiting in the kitchen that day, hoping her mother would answer her. Hoping for a clue that would explain why Ailsa was the way she was, why she’d given up on Anna so easily. But Ailsa never had responded.
It occurred to Anna now, as she drifted off in the moonlight that streamed in through the window of her room at Breagh House, that she had long ago stopped wondering about her mother’s whys. Maybe Elspeth could explain. Or maybe it wasn’t worth the words.
Whether or not it had been the lesson her mother had meant to teach her middle daughter, the one thing Anna had learned from her childhood was that too many people tried to define the power of girls and women. They pigeonholed it, required it to look a certain way, made it seem small or pointless, or they tried to steal it away by force. Women could either let them do that or refuse.
Anna had already given up too much. First with Henry and now with Mike. Well, she wouldn’t make that mistake again. Which was why she needed to keep herself from thinking about any man here in the glen, especially Connal, as anything other than a casual acquaintance. Connal MacGregor was pretty to look at from a distance but definitely not safe to play with.