He gave a small shake. “I’m working.”
“Surely I don’t need an escort here,” she said. “You wouldn’t mind if I were to join them, would you? I should love to see the bride.”
Lucian studied her with an opaque expression. “No,” he then said. “I wouldn’t mind.”
She did a little hop of excitement. “I shall be back before dinner.”
As she freshened up in the side chamber, she wondered which of her hair combs would most delight a bride; she couldn’t decide between the silver one with jade stones and the rose gold with amethysts. The obvious solution was to simply gift them both, but once Lucian found out—and he would—he would harp about her ignorant ways again.
When she passed the door to Mr. Matthews’s room on her way downstairs, she paused. Matthews had seemed a little peculiar earlier, but he had lunched and perhaps napped by now, which surely had restored his good spirits. And after the taxing journey inflicted upon him at short notice by her husband, he was possibly in the mood for some diversion.
She knocked.
Matthews looked indeed well rested; his hair was neat with a fresh side parting and his mustache freshly waxed. His surprise to see her quickly turned into concern. “Mrs. Blackstone—are you well?”
His eyes were searching her face with an overly familiar thoroughness.
“Certainly,” she said perkily.
“Oh, well, I’m glad …” He stuck out his neck and looked left and right down the murky corridor. “It is a rather ghastly place, isn’t it? And for a lady of quality …”
“I was wondering whether you should like to come to the community’s wedding celebrations downstairs,” she said, “to acclimatize you.”
He blinked. “A miner’s wedding—is that what this racket is?”
He really could do with a drink and a dance, the man. “It is, and I reckon there are plenty of lasses in need of a dance partner,” she coaxed.
“Dancing,” he said, recoiling, “with miners.”
For a moment, he appeared not like Matthews at all; the polite, nervous man had been replaced by a sneering one.
She had taken a small step back. “I intended no offense.”
He ran a hand over his hair, and his solicitous expression slid back in place so naturally she wondered whether she had imagined the sudden change in his mood seconds ago.
“Very gracious of you to attend, ma’am,” he said. “It should be quite interesting, anthropologically speaking.”
“Anthropologically?”
“Well, this whole place—it brings Samuel Johnson’s observation about Scotland to mind there for a moment, doesn’t it?” he said with a low laugh. “‘The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!’”
An uncomfortable feeling came over her. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Ah well,” he said, smiling nervously. “You know how I mean it.”
She wasn’t sure, but she suspected it hadn’t been well-intentioned. She did recall imagining Lucian as a sword-wielding, kilted barbarian, and her cheeks flushed. Part of her had found it titillating to imagine him so, but now it felt as though she had done him an injustice to reduce him to such a character.
She gave Matthews a nod. But no smile. She had given thought to her smile lately, because she had consciously withheld it from her （then） undeserving husband, and it had occurred to her that she smiled more often to preempt someone else’s displeasure than to express her joy. Any remotely self-determined woman should claim control over the curve of her own mouth.
A swell of warm, damp air and raucous laughter greeted her in the downstairs room and swept the odd encounter with Matthews to the back of her mind. All movable tables and chairs had been pushed aside to make space for the punishing rhythm of a reel and the dancing crowd. She stood back against the wall at first, searching for familiar faces, bobbing along on the balls of her feet to the fiddle. It was how Mhairi found her, and the girl took her to the bride, a dark-haired young woman who, radiantly happy and overwhelmed with her day, just laughed and accepted the gift as though Hattie were any regular guest, and gestured at her to join the dancing.
She should leave. Mhairi looked lovely tonight, in a bluebell dress that matched her eyes and with her braids pinned in a coronet around her head, and she should be shaking the floorboards with some good footwork, not feeling obliged to cater to her. She allowed herself one longing glance at the intriguing figures the dancers were weaving right in front of them. The bride was dancing with her father, Mr. Boyd, and he was laughing while they spun. Rosie Fraser’s red hair flashed in the fray.