Bella poked her arm. ‘Because you would have wanted to see us squirm. You’d have been teasing us about being made for each other or some other sick story like that. You’d have had me blushing as red as your T-shirt.’

‘No way,’ Cat protested. ‘That’s not who I am. And besides, it wouldn’t have crossed my mind.’

‘Hah! I know you better than you know yourself, missy. But here’s Jamie, back with our lovely coffees.’ She cooed at him while he distributed drinks and scones and shortbread and had him sit beside her at the cramped table.

As soon as they’d cleared their plates and emptied their cups, Bella linked arms with James and stood up. ‘Time for us to go walkabout.’ Almost as an afterthought, she said, ‘Come on, Cat, let’s see who we can see. I swear I saw Stephen Fry earlier, over by the Author’s Yurt.’

Cat fell into step beside them but it soon became clear to her that she was only there as a sort of chaperone to stop the adult tongues wagging. James and Bella kept whispering in each other’s ears so even if they’d wanted to include Cat, she wouldn’t have been able to contribute to a subject whose identity was unknown to her. Besides, the duckboard walkways were too narrow for them to walk comfortably three abreast when there were other book lovers to be taken into consideration. Cat was on the point of making her excuses and heading into the bookshop when she caught sight of Ellie Tilney emerging from the Spiegeltent.

Cat cut across the corner of the grass and waved to Ellie, whose solemn face lit up in a smile. ‘Hi, Ellie,’ Cat said. ‘How are you doing?’

‘Good, thanks. And you?’

‘I’m sorry I missed you yesterday, I got dragged off for a run out to North Berwick for fish and chips, thanks to my brother’s friend who wanted to show off his new car.’

‘Tedious,’ Ellie said, falling into step beside Cat. ‘Men and cars is a recipe for boredom.’

‘Susie was telling me you managed to snag tickets for Macbeth, you lucky thing.’

Ellie nodded enthusiastically. ‘It was brilliant. Really dark and sinister. They played it like the Macbeths believed they were invincible, like they had special powers.’

‘What? Like vampires or something?’

‘Exactly that. So it was all the more shocking when everything started coming apart the way it would for mere mortals. Henry hasn’t stopped talking about it.’

Even the sound of his name made Cat tingle. ‘Henry’s such a good dancer.’ The non sequitur was out of her mouth before she could check it with her brain. The line clearly surprised and amused her companion.

‘I suppose,’ Ellie said with a smile.

‘I hope he didn’t take it the wrong way the other evening. When that idiot Johnny Thorpe pushed in and stopped us dancing together. OK, I did say I would have a dance with him, but he made out that he was my partner for the evening, which was total crap. So rude.’ She tried to stop herself babbling but without success. ‘It was really nice to see Henry again, I thought he’d gone for good.’

‘Oh no, when he met you at Fiona’s, he’d just come up to make sure the house was all prepared for us. My dad’s such a total perfectionist, Henry wanted to avoid any hassle with the rental company and the staff.’

That would never have occurred to Cat, it being so far from her own experience of the world. ‘Right. So who was it I saw him dancing with after I got dragged off by Johnny?’

‘Miranda Tait-Brown. Her mother and my mother were at school together. We’ve known the Tait-Browns all our lives.’

‘She must have been well pleased to have such a good dancer for a partner.’ And before she could stop herself – ‘Do you think she’s pretty?’

Ellie raised one eyebrow. ‘Never have.’

‘Is Henry coming to the Book Festival today, then?’

‘No, he’s gone on a ride-out with my father.’

‘What’s a ride-out? I’ve never heard of that.’

‘Most of the Borders towns have a traditional ceremony where they sort of beat the bounds or mark something about the town’s history. It’s an excuse for a bunch of men to mount up their horses and ride over the fields then get horribly drunk. There might have been a good reason for it once but now it’s just silly business.’ Ellie glanced over at the book tent. ‘Look, have you got a minute?’

Regardless of her commitments, Cat would have said yes. She followed Ellie into the temporary bookshop, where her new friend selected a large coffee-table book from one of the displays and beckoned Cat to one of the sofas arranged around the room. She checked the contents page and opened the book about halfway through, so it sat across both their thighs. ‘This is the Langholm Common Riding,’ she said, pointing to a striking photograph of a quartet of plump bowler-hatted men on horseback riding through a narrow street. ‘These guys are called the cornets. You see, they’re carrying the standard.’

She turned the page to reveal an imposing fortified house against a dawn sky. Cat had learned enough in Edinburgh to understand it was a hybrid of Gothic and Scots Baronial. In the foreground, a string of riders in scarlet coats and bowler hats cut a dramatic diagonal swathe across the photograph. ‘That’s Northanger Abbey and this is our ride-out.’

‘OMG,’ Cat breathed. The abbey was vampire heaven. It was the perfect setting for an adventure in the Hebridean Harpies series. She said as much, and Ellie raised her eyebrows, a wry smile quirking one corner of her mouth.

‘You’re not the first one to say that. It’s not nearly as grand as it looks, though. Some parts of it are almost modern.’ She pointed to the figure at the head of the ride-out. His face was unreadable in the limited light of the dawn, but his carriage was erect and his lean figure a sharp contrast to the Langholm cornets. ‘That’s my dad.’ Neither her voice nor her face gave anything away about her feelings towards her father. She glanced at her watch. ‘Oh God, is that the time? I’m supposed to meet my cousin for lunch out in Cramond. I have to run.’ She dumped the book on Cat’s lap and jumped to her feet. ‘Lovely to see you again – are you going to the Highland Ball tomorrow night?’

‘Yes, will I see you there?’

‘For sure.’ Ellie bent down and gave Cat a quick hug. Cat watched her leave, holding tight to the book, thinking that it would be hard to imagine how the day could have been improved upon.


* * *

Although Annie Morland had worked hard to convince her daughters that fretting over clothes was a waste of time and energy, she might as well have saved her energy. From the moment Ellie Tilney left her side until Cat arrived at the Highland Ball, nothing occupied her thoughts but how she could look good enough to captivate Henry Tilney. Had she paid more attention to her mother, she would have understood how little store men set by the cut of a woman’s dress; at least, the sort of men it would be worth her while trying to attract. No man would notice her outfit except when it revealed too much; no woman would be happy unless they could find something to criticise. Cat had yet to learn that she would be best served by dressing to please herself rather than ceding control to another’s taste, real or imagined. Instead, she was convinced that the wrong choice would destroy her chances of impressing Henry, so her entire day was spent in consideration of her wardrobe.

Having finally settled on a simple dark blue dress in a silky fabric that caught the light and made it dance, Cat walked into the Highland Ball in a ferment of expectation. Her eyes darted everywhere, eager to catch a glimpse of Henry Tilney, but equally eager to spot John Thorpe so she might more easily avoid him. She knew she’d be lucky if Henry Tilney came near her after the way John Thorpe had behaved, but she couldn’t help hoping Ellie might have put in a good word for her. But that good word would be wasted if she was being monopolised by the man she devoutly wished not to see.

This sort of anxiety was entirely new to Cat. She’d only ever been pursued in a half-hearted way by village boys who were going through the motions of courtship, experimenting in a safe zone where it didn’t really matter. Both sides understood these were flirtations with training wheels firmly attached; and besides, Cat had never found any of the local boys even momentarily worthy of her fantasies. This heart-quickening, breath-stopping feeling that hit her whenever she thought of Henry was something she’d only read about, never mind the stomach-clenching dread of being pursued by someone she was growing heartily to dislike. She had no idea how to defend herself against his attentions and she was far too kind simply to tell him to get lost. And she did know enough to understand that being blunt with John could have awkward repercussions for her beloved brother and Bella, neither of whom she wanted to inconvenience.

Their party was barely inside the ballroom when they were waved over to join the Thorpes. Cat hung back, trying to keep at least one person between her and John. When he greeted her loudly, she pretended she couldn’t hear him over the music. Luckily, she was soon drawn aside by Bella. ‘I know what you’re going to say, but honestly, I am so going to dance with Jamie tonight. I don’t care what people say, he’s such a sweetie. But you have to cover for us. You need to dance with Johnny, so it just looks like the four of us having fun.’ She looked around for her brother. ‘Damn, he’s walking off. But he’ll be back in a minute.’

There was nothing Cat wanted to say that wouldn’t have hurt her friend’s feelings, so she said nothing, staying put as Bella and James moved off towards the dance floor, resigning herself with heavy heart to being the focus of John Thorpe’s bulldozer bluster. In a bid to avoid his eye, she fished out her phone and pretended to be absorbed in her Facebook page. When a shadow fell over her screen, she was almost too dismayed to look up. But if she had failed to do so, she’d have missed the welcome sight of Henry Tilney leaning towards her, a friendly smile lighting up his dark eyes. ‘Can you drag yourself away from Facebook long enough to dance with me?’ he asked mischievously.