But no. The impression of a fairy-tale castle was, if anything, stronger in person. Though she could see from the outside the signs of disrepair that Strathrannoch had told her about in his letters, she was still boggled by the place, white and turreted, crenellations notched against the sharp blue of the early-autumn sky.
She had expected the fairy-tale castle. She had anticipated the missing glass on the upper-floor windows and the tumbledown ruin of the gate lodge, overgrown with mosses.
She had not anticipated the zebra.
The black-and-white equine moved placidly past them as they approached the castle’s front door, wending its way down the drive and toward the postilion.
The postboy swore in a Scots so thick and broad that Lydia could not quite make it out. “What in hell—”
“Not to worry!” Georgiana called out. “’Tis only a zebra!” She turned to Lydia and the expression of blithe unconcern fell off her face. “Why is there azebra?” she hissed.
“I—I don’t—”
“Your earl did not mention a penchant for acquiring African mammals?”
Lydia felt a familiar panic swell in her chest, the kind thatalways rose when she was forced into unpredictable social situations. “I—no, he didn’t mention any—any animals—”
Georgiana appeared to notice the blood draining slowly from Lydia’s face and heaved a sigh. She gave Lydia a gentle shove toward the front door. “Never mind. I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.” Under her breath, she muttered, “For azebra.”
The front door to the castle was tall and arched, positioned between two dainty towers. Lydia lifted her eyes higher, straining to see the crest of the ramparts above her.
Her heart fluttered. Her throat tightened.
Strathrannoch, she reminded herself.This is Strathrannoch’s home.
She knew him. He knew her. He was not a stranger. She did not need to be afraid.
She tried to make her unruly body believe it. She bit down hard on her lower lip and knocked on the door.
It was flung open almost instantaneously, and Lydia promptly dropped her reticule in shock. Papers exploded outward at her feet, but she did not look down.
She stared instead at the man who had opened the door.
He was an enormous fellow, tall—considerably taller even than Jasper, the tallest of her brothers—and probably twice as broad about the shoulder as Jasper as well. His hair was a goldish sort of brown, curly and rumpled, and his face was obscured by a haphazard growth of whiskers. He wore some kind of boiled-leather smock over his clothing, and Lydia wondered, half hysterically, where they had found a pot big enough to boil the leather for a man of these titanic proportions.
He was scowling.
Lydia swallowed. Was this the… butler? She racked herbrain and found to her horror that she could not recall Strathrannoch mentioning, in any of his letters, the name of his butler.
Georgiana gave her another, slightly more discreet shove. Bacon whimpered.
“Good afternoon,” Lydia said. Oh hell and damnation, her voice was trembling so hard, he mightn’t be able to make out her words. She felt her face flame but forced herself to keep talking despite her embarrassment. “I am here to see the—the Earl of Strathrannoch.”
This is your chance, she repeated in her head.This is your only chance.
The words felt suddenly less inspiring and rather more ominous.
“Aye,” the man said, “you’re looking at him.”
It was a measure of her rapidly increasing terror that she looked from side to side in desperate hope of some other hidden fellow before returning her gaze to the bearded giant.
“Oh,” she whispered. “You are—you are—”
“Aye,” he said again, “I’m Strathrannoch.”
She stared up at the man’s stern face, the hazel eyes boring into her from beneath the fierce line of his dark-gold brows.
This was Strathrannoch.Thiswas Strathrannoch? This glower belonged to the man who had teased her about her politics and confessed his most private vulnerabilities over the last three years?
