Page 46 of Stolen Time

Seth might be the next McAllister consort.

And there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do about it.

14

CONSORT’S KISS

As much ofthe clan as could fit gathered at Mabel McAllister’s house on Monday evening. Seth wished he could bow out of the proceedings, but as one lucky — or unlucky, depending on how you looked at it — to be counted as a prospective consort, he knew his presence there was pretty much mandatory.

Because the weather was so fine, the gathering spilled out into the backyard, where festive bunting in shades of pale blue and pale pink had been hung, and a trio of musical McAllisters played flute and guitar and cello. Rather than the rollicking tunes popular on the radio, this group focused more on folksy-sounding melodies that might have harkened back to the clan’s early days in Scotland, and they clearly were doing their best to provide soothing background sounds instead of playing songs that would make people want to dance.

He supposed it was a good thing that so many McAllisters had turned out for the party, since the crowd would make it much easier to avoid his cousin Abigail. Although he knew there was no way he could wriggle out of the consort’s kiss, he also didn’t see much point in socializing with her before then.

Somehow, he doubted he’d be able to hide his feelings from his cousin, his distraction. This party might have been fun if he could have brought Deborah with him and they could have nibbled on the various goodies and listened to the music together. Now, though, he only wanted to hide in the corner behind theprima’sprize parlor palm until it was all over.

He’d only caught one glimpse of Abigail so far. She’d been talking to several of the elders and had worn one of her signature white frocks, although this was a fancy silk dress that looked bespoke rather than bought at his parents’ mercantile or at the small JC Penney shop farther down Main Street. Since she’d been caught up in a conversation, Seth didn’t think she saw him, which was all to the good.

Of course, his parents had been there, with Charles somewhat near their orbit but also just far enough away to send a clear message that, while they might have dragged him to this gathering, he had no intention of doing anything more than the bare minimum for civility. Molly McAllister had caught Seth’s gaze as he went past, so at least he didn’t have to worry about them thinking he’d stayed away.

A group of male cousins around his age had gathered by the punch bowl outdoors, most likely discussing their prospects for becoming theprima-in-waiting’s consort. None of them appeared overly excited by the idea, except possibly Seth’s cousin Isaac, who was the studious type, always with his nose in a book. From what Seth had heard, Isaac was taking some sort of college correspondence course, since there were no universities inside the clan’s territory that he could attend.

Because Isaac was almost as shy and retiring and pale as Abigail, Seth supposed they would make a good couple. Now he could only hope that the Goddess — or fate, or whatever entity made that particular spark flare between aprima-in-waiting andher true consort — would also think the match made sense and would leave him and the rest of them out of it.

As good a job as he’d done in avoiding Abigail, he wasn’t so lucky when it came to Mabel McAllister, the clan’s formidableprima. She was as robust and forthright as her daughter was quiet and languid, and she quite deliberately put herself in his path as he went to refill his cup of punch.

“Oh, Seth,” Mabel said, “I would like a word with you.”

Whenever his mother used that phrase, Seth knew he was in some kind of trouble. In this case, though, he could guess what was coming next.

Maybe an entirely different kind of trouble, but trouble nonetheless.

“Yes,prima?” he said, hoping he sounded both polite and also so unassuming that Mabel would decide he didn’t have nearly enough fire and conviction to be a suitable match for her daughter.

A pause as theprimalooked him up and down. She’d had Abigail somewhat late in life, and so was in her middle fifties, trim and tall for a woman, with hair a much deeper gold than her daughter’s and sharp gray eyes.

“I’m so glad you could come to the party,” Mabel said. “Abigail and I have been talking, and she told me she wants you to be the first one to give the consort’s kiss.”

Even though he’d known this was coming, Seth had to resist the urge to flee…or maybe splash some of the cold punch he was carrying in his face to shake himself loose from this nightmare.

Unfortunately, he knew he was wide awake.

“She does?” he managed, which he knew wasn’t exactly a scintillating reply.

“Yes,” Mabel said. The corners of her mouth lifted in something that wasn’t quite a smirk but skirted around the borders of one. “She feels quite comfortable with you…and Iknow she hopes you will be the one, and so her search won’t have to extend any farther than her encounter with you. We’ll want you to be here at the house at three o’clock tomorrow.”

Something about the exchange seemed almost surreal. Was it really possible that in an age with new inventions and technology emerging at what felt like an almost weekly rate, they were still discussing something as positively medieval as choosing a consort for a young unmarried woman?

Actually, the practice went even farther back than the Middle Ages, as best he’d been able to determine, all the way back to the McAllisters’ pagan roots long before the Normans ever set foot on the British Isles.

Not that it really mattered when it all started. What mattered was that he couldn’t think of a single way to get out of this madness.

“I work until six,” he said. He knew his tone was flat, bordering on rude, but it was the only excuse he could come up with that might buy him some more precious time.

“Oh, that’s nothing to worry about,” Mabel replied as she gave an unconcerned wave of her hand. “I’ll speak to Mr. Allenby and let him know there’s an important family matter you need to attend to.”

This was no idle threat; while no one in the mine’s management completely understood the inner workings of the McAllister family, all of them…Lionel Allenby included…knew enough to realize that Mabel was the one in charge and pretty much all of Jerome danced to her tune, whether they were a member of the clan or not.

However, Seth disliked the idea of having theprimaput in a word for him, like a parent sending a note to school so he might be dismissed early.

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