Somewhere along the Way

Dornoch Castle, Scotland, 1848 The trouble all began when her mother named her after a horse. Thinking about her best friend back in England, and how she must be enjoying the last of the season in London right now, Lady Annabella Stewart shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. Resentment and humiliation seethed within her. Everything had looked so bright promising that day a few months ago when she left Saltwood Castle and journeyed to her family's town house in London. She had just turned seventeen, it was to be her first season, and she had considered herself the most fortunate of women. Oh, how the world had turned upon her!You should have known Bella. You should have known. Anyone named after a horse... Shortly before she was born, her mother had attended a horse race, and had watched a beautiful dapple-gray filly named Lady Annabella cross the finish line first to win. "But, Bella," her mother had often said since, "it was a verybeautifulhorse. And it did come in first." Only when a glass of champagne was thrust in her hand did Annabella pull her thoughts away from England and the past to Scotland and the present. Over, she thought. My life will soon be over. This couldn't be happening. Not to her. She stared at her father, feeling the panicked pounding of her heart, the choking fingers of fate tightening around her throat. Feeling sick and desperate, she let her eyes do her pleading. The Duke of Grenville narrowed his eyes slightly and cleared his throat. He did not speak. Annabella closed her eyes, shutting from her sight the vision of her father's grim face. He's going to do it, she thought. He's really going to go through with this. She would be betrothed coldheartedly, and without feeling, to a man she had just met, a man who had been twenty years old when she was born. Humiliated, Annabella felt the chill of the castle reach out to her from the far corners of the room. This was a celebration, a gathering of family and clans to seal a bargain and honor a betrothal. It should be a happy occasion. But instead, it was a day of sadness. Annabella's mother tried to look cheerful, but her eyes sparkled a bit too brightly to be anything but tears. Upstairs, Bettina the maid was crying. Jarvis, the duke's valet, had something in his eye. Outside, the rain poured down. Even the candles in the candelabra dripped. "Here's tae us and to hell with the English!" The loudly flung toast sliced through the soft tones of conversation like a thunderclap, leaving nothing but the eerie silence of a tomb behind. Anyone in the great hall of Dornoch Castle could have shouted it. At any other time that toast would have been enough to raise the hackles on any red-blooded Englishman, but Alisdair Stewart, the Duke of Grenville, simply looked at his daughter, Annabella, and John Gordon, the Earl of Huntly, her betrothed, and raised his glass. "May you enjoy a long and happy life together." He looked at his wife and smiled. The duchess raised her glass, and smiled, looking at their daughter. But Annabella did not smile. She did not look at anyone. Instead, she stared at a fixed point in the tapestry across the room, her breathing uneven, and tried to hide the outrage she felt at being betrotheCoffman, Elaine is the author of 'Somewhere along the Way' with ISBN 9780440208006 and ISBN 0440208009.