Read Highland Fling for Free Online Page B

call me Jenny.’
    ‘Or she might prefer a whisky,’ said Felicity.
    ‘We don’t say “a whisky”, Felicity. If Miss Porter prefers whisky she can say so.’
    ‘Miss Porter’ yearned for the courage to say that what she really wanted was a boiling hot toddy, but didn’t dare. She was still shivering, although neither of the other two seemed to feel cold. ‘Whatever is easiest,’ she said, wanting whisky for its more warming characteristics, but feeling sherry was probably safer.
    ‘It’s no trouble for Felicity to give you whisky if that is what you prefer.’
    Rashly, she said, ‘Yes, please,’ glad that Henry wasn’t there to disapprove. He didn’t like her to drink spirits. She tried to picture her own mother being like Lady Dalmain, having her own hot-water supply, ordering her daughter about as if she were a servant, or a delinquent teenager, driving the daughter to drink. She couldn’t make the necessary leap of imagination – it was too far from reality. Her own mother was a sweetie and Jenny found herself suddenly wondering guiltily if she took advantage of her.
    While Jenny was sipping her whisky, she heard a bell jangling deep towards the back of the house.Neither Lady Dalmain nor the dogs appeared to have heard it, but Felicity jumped.
    ‘That’ll be Lachlan,’ Felicity said, relatively calmly but with a slight edge of hysteria in her voice. ‘He’s coming to supper. I hope you don’t mind, Mama. There’s plenty. It’s only stew.’
    Lady Dalmain’s expression froze. It was as if she didn’t know which of her daughter’s
faux pas
she should pounce on first: the unexpected guest, the mention of food in that vulgar way, or the use of the word ‘stew’. Jenny bit her lip, her sense of the ridiculous heightened by alcohol.
    ‘And who, if I may ask who is to be dining at my table, is
Lachlan?
’
    ‘Lachlan McGregor. You remember. I knew him years and years ago. I got in touch with him at Elaine’s and he’s coming to dinner. I’ll just go and let him in.’
    Jenny would have liked very much to be able to offer to do this for her, but that really would be presuming on her position as very new guest. She had to stick it out, alone with Lady Dalmain, who was smouldering far more effectively than the logs in the grate, which issued forth smoke, but no heat.
    There was an uncomfortable silence. Jenny tucked her hands up her sleeves in an attempt to warm them, but found it only made her colder. The largest of the dogs got up and shook itself, obviously keen to match Jenny’s skirt with her jacket and her trousers with an application of dog hairs.
    ‘Actually,’ said Jenny, ‘I brought you a little present. Shall I run and fetch it?’
    Lady Dalmain inclined her head, which Jenny took to mean yes, and escaped, aware as she passedthrough the hall that Felicity and Lachlan had disappeared. Possibly Felicity had taken him into the kitchen for a pre-pre-dinner drink, or a health warning about Lady Dalmain. Glad that Lachlan was at least Scottish, and therefore less sensitive to the cold and more impervious to strong drink, Jenny scanned her clothes to see what else she could put on. She found a silk scarf that more or less matched the rest of what she was wearing, and she tucked it round her neck. With luck no one would notice she hadn’t always been wearing it. She found the carrier bag with the presents, feeling mean for giving them to Lady Dalmain, and not Felicity. She’d have to get Felicity something else, when she had the opportunity. The worst part was that she knew she was only giving presents to Lady Dalmain because she had already picked up Felicity’s anxious-for-approval-daughter habits. She was even worrying in case the Belgian chocolates and African violet screamed ‘bought from a service station’.
    You don’t need to panic, she told herself. Lady Dalmain has probably never darkened the doors of a service station in her life.
    She ran downstairs and back into the