A Beauty at the Highland Court - Celeste Barclay Page 0,1

English speakers. To make it easier for the reader, I thought to include this note on pronunciation.

Beathan—BEH-un

Brighde—BREE ju

Cathal—KAH-hul

Gormal—GAU rum-ul

Hamish—HA-mish

Lachlan—LACH-lunn

Lellan—LEL-lan

Taran—TA-ran

One

Arabella Johnstone gripped the back of the chair and tried not to groan as her maid cinched her kirtle tighter. She’d already suffered through more than an hour of Eliza curling and pinning her hair. While her maid created some of the most exquisite coiffeurs Arabella had even worn—in fact, ever seen—she didn’t have a gentle touch. More than once Arabella was grateful that her hair was auburn, because surely her scalp bled from being a pincushion. Arabella took one more shallow breath as she felt her maid tie the ends of her gown’s laces.

“There you go, my lady. You’re a right bobby-dazzler, if I may say so,” Eliza beamed.

“Thank you, Eliza.” Arabella smiled. She looked across her chamber as Blair Sutherland’s maid brushed out her mistress’s velvet kirtle for the last time. Arabella breathed a wistful sigh. She and Blair had grown closer since Blair’s older sister Maude married and moved to the Isle of Lewis. Arabella had befriended the reserved Maude when the sisters arrived at court. Taunted mercilessly for being unfashionably curvaceous, Maude became the victim of her future sister-by-marriage’s venom. With Kieran MacLeod’s support, Maude emerged from her wallflower ways and found a love match.

“I just need a few moments more,” Blair looked over her shoulder at Arabella.

“You needn’t rush. We still have time,” Arabella reassured as she dabbed rose water behind her ears and into her cleavage. She knew the Great Hall would be sweltering, and the fresh scent was as much for her as it was for anyone else. It would offer her a reprieve from the stench of too many unwashed and overheated bodies.

As Arabella watched Blair, she wondered when her friend would find her match. She suspected that it would happen soon, since Blair and Hardwin Cameron were inseparable. It wouldn’t surprise Arabella if Blair and Hardi (as she called him) handfasted before a priest could read the banns. Thoughts of Maude and Blair inevitably turned her mind toward their older brother, Lachlan. Arabella stifled her sigh as she thought about the handsome, dark-haired man who appeared at court every few months. She didn’t envy him his lengthy rides south from Dunrobin. The keep was along the northeastern coast of Scotland, almost as far north as that of the Sinclairs, and marriage linked the two clans. Arabella had long admired Lachlan’s easygoing nature and protectiveness of his sisters. The three siblings were extremely close, and both Maude and Blair had looked forward to his visits. Arabella knew Lachlan looked for excuses to see them. She couldn’t help the sadness she felt when she realized Lachlan would rarely make the long trip to court once Blair left.

“I’m almost done,” Blair said as she bent to pull up her stockings and slip on her shoes. She disliked wearing stockings, so she put them on last.

Arabella thought about her other friends who had left over the past three years. Nearly all her original friends were gone, one after another marrying and leaving court. First to go had been Elizabeth Fraser, a woman everyone assumed would remain a spinster. Despite her beauty, her father made and broke four betrothals, all for the sake of politics. But when Robert the Bruce’s adopted brother Edward came to court, she snared his attention. Edward’s single-minded focus on wooing her eventually won Elizabeth over.

Isabella Dunbar stunned many people when she married the dashing English knight sent to spy on King Robert. Her husband was half Scottish; after his English father married a MacLellan, his father switched his allegiance to Scotland. But both of his parents died while the knight was still a child, and English soldiers captured him in the name of King Edward “Longshanks.” Raised in England, he longed for his Scottish home and found it when he married Isabella.

Maude had been the next to marry, and Arabella rejoiced as she thought about her former roommate and close companion. Then she tried not to grin when she recalled how Allyson Elliot bolted from court when she learned she was to marry the roguish Ewan Gordon. What a merry chase she had led him on! But Arabella sobered when she recalled how Allyson was kidnapped and nearly tortured and what Arabella later learned of Allyson’s family secrets.

Cairstine Grant convinced Ewan’s rakish twin Eoin to pretend to be her betrothed so her younger sister could marry, only for them to marry in truth.