her forces extremely effectively, which meant that the Scots who had been taught the dances at school and knew them back to front and the girls from the halls could partner up extremely well. The lights flashed as Nethmi, from Sri Lanka, bounded around the eightsome reel, her small hands in the great meaty paws of Tam Lickwood, one of the hospital porters, a proud Govan man. There were consultant surgeons from the hospital (thin, austere men who’d learned their trade in the chill sea winds of Aberdeen and St. Andrews); a young radiographer from Elgin, who’d brought his entire team; a clique of Glaswegian nurses who’d trained and moved to London together, who gathered and fussed around Cormac like he was a new puppy (something, he felt very strongly, that must be of enormous comfort to their patients); a girl called Yazzie, whom he’d noticed in the halls and who now seemed clamped to his side whenever he needed a partner.
Kim-Ange wore a yellow Buchanan tartan dress, a pattern so loud that many Buchanan descendants who had arrived in Scotland on the track of their ancestors and had been shown their family stripe had turned away, deflated. She had also tied large bows of the same material into her hair, which meant wherever Cormac was in the room, he could usually spot her, clearly having an absolute whale of a time, enthusiastically twirling in the arms of a faintly concerned-looking porter called Piotr. Cormac smiled to himself and agreed to make up the third member of a Dashing White Sergeant team with Chi-Li, who lived down the corridor and had never so much as nodded to him before, but now, wearing a bright red dress with a tartan trim, looked glorious and danced beautifully on tiny feet. He did, in fact, survey the entire scene with some satisfaction and quickly sketched it in his head to send to . . . ha, that was odd. Why he was thinking of Lissa right then. He wondered how she was getting on at hers.
Chapter 45
Lissa was sitting absolutely flat on her arse, her skirt splayed around her hips, howling with laughter.
She hadn’t realized, to be fair, quite how formidably strong the elderflower wine was—it tasted like cordial—even as Zoe had given her a few worried glances.
And it had been so very long since she’d been able to cut loose. And it was, the tiny insects in the air notwithstanding, the most utterly beautiful evening. Lissa couldn’t believe how light it was, was convinced it couldn’t be past six P.M., even as the clock ticked on deep into the night.
The whole village was there in a flood of different colors and kilts, everyone cheerful and laughing—many was the night when they had had to hold the ceilidh in Lennox’s barn and dash about in the mud, when there was absolutely nothing to be done about that except to deal with the fact that you were going to get very muddy indeed. But on a night like tonight, the heavy sun hung in the sky like syrup, slowly and patiently lowering itself; the midges buzzed and hummed imperceptibly; the fiddlers played wilder; the grass came to your ankles; and the elderflower wine tasted like nectar and could persuade even a nervous, slightly uptight Londoner, Lissa was explaining to all and sundry, to dance.
On the straw in front of the barn, she could see Joan hoofing merrily up and down with Sebastian the vet (in real life they were everyday nemeses, as she was constantly second-guessing his diagnoses and making his clients crazy), galloping the pair of them to the same reel that was taking place in slightly more cramped conditions five hundred miles to the south.
The contrast was stark: there, different people from different backgrounds were taking a shot and throwing themselves into things and having a laugh. Up here, it was a deadly serious business, like people playing a sport. The fiddlers played fast and clean. There was no caller, just a brief announcement—“Flying Scotsman!” “Cumberland Square Eight!”—and then people would immediately dissolve partnerships or join up with others, pull the awkward-looking teenagers off the walls they were leaning against. And Lissa had danced every one.
Lennox had strode up, little John on his shoulders, and was watching cheerfully, leaning on a barn gate—he wasn’t much of a dancer. But Lissa, emboldened by the music and the alcohol, was watching everyone else and suddenly was determined to join in the fun. It was