A Mid-Summer Ball's Thoughts

Archie

I've blown it! There's no other way to put it, I've totally, completely blown it! I can't believe it! Oh sure, I helped get Glen Bogle back – that's great, it really is, for everyone else, but after all the work it's nothing more than a hollow victory for me. People keep coming up to me & slapping me on the back, congratulating me on getting Glen Bogle back together, but they don't understand. How could they? I didn't even understand myself until I walked out of the kitchen door just now. I now know that it means absolutely nothing to me without Lexie by my side to share it.

How could I have been so blind?! So stupid! How could I not see what Stella was doing to us & how badly she was treating Lexie? All I could see, all I wanted to see was this phoenix of an Estate rising from the ashes. No, being in love was too much like having responsibilities, & I was never very good at either; that's what I'd tell myself, right before I buried my head back in the safe sand of more troubles with the bank or whatever. Love was for people who could afford the luxury. Yet I was all ready in it all along, only now it may be too late.

Then there was Stella To me, she was the one with all the responsibilities. She was the one who had to answer to the Bank. I know the way she started out around here she/we messed up for a while but the House & Estate survived, just! We wouldn't be anywhere at all without Stella (Hell! Without her my parents would have lost their home!) & I'll never take the credit for much of that away from her, she deserves it. But then to try & destroy it all; & to do it, so she said, to be able to stay near me! That's crazy, frightening, bordering on obsession even! I should have known there was something up from Golly's reaction if nothing else; he's a shrewd judge of character & he avoided Ms. Moon whenever he could from day one. When I think what poor Lexie must have had to go through because of her! If Stella really loved me, she would have seen how much this dear place means to me, meant to me. How can it mean anything to me now?

But now, I'm hopelessly trapped. With Jamie gone and our sister Lizzie unable (& unwilling) to inherit, there is no-one else, at least until I sign this place out of the stone-age when baby Martha grows up. So I must stay & be 'The Laird' (whomever he is), because the Estate needs a figurehead or it will crumble again, this time surely taking my parents, Golly, Duncan, Lexie & the rest down with it, & Katrina would have been right all along, but I can't stay.

I can't stay because if I do my soul will eat away at itself until there's nothing left. Seeing Lexie every single day, talking to her but never saying anything, never being able to touch her (at least before this I occasionally got a friendly hug), acting like she's just another employee when all I really want to do is sweep her into my arms & kiss her senseless! A claymore in the heart would surely be easier. But when it comes down to it, we do both live here, so we'll have to find a way to talk to each other, eventually.

This is all my own stupid, stupid fault! Why could I not just have started something with Lexie that day two years ago at the station? It would have saved everyone so much pain! If I'm brutally honest with myself, Justine & I were over when I didn't go back after that first ball. (She wasn't stupid, she saw in the end, even before I did that she was part of the mask I wore to convince myself & the world that I was coping even if I wasn't). Katrina would always have had to follow her ambitions someday with or without Fergal's appearance & her interest in politics; just like I thought I was doing when I 'escaped' to London. I realise now that London was always more about what I didn't want than what I did. I didn't want to see the blame in my father's eyes, or the pain in my mother's. I didn't want to meet Jamie's accusing ghost round every corner, asking why I hadn't done enough to save him, so instead I ran. I ran as hard, as fast & as far as I could; but all I learnt was you can't run from yourself.

So in the end through no choice of my own, I stopped running, but I came back here & hid behind Glen Bogle instead. Even at their worse the Estate problems were an 'escape'. It was almost like, if I fixed the Estate's problems, did the work Jamie should have been here to do, Jamie would forgive me, father would forgive me, & then maybe, just maybe, I could start to forgive myself.

That was why, once I'd decided to stay, I came up with so many ideas, so many schemes to get the House & the Estate back on track. That's why I let the Bank push me around, why I let them muscle in on my home, because I felt like I deserved it. Deserved the 'punishment'. Maybe that was even why things didn't work out for Katrina & I. For a while there, I thought I was in love with her; I really did, but maybe I couldn't truly give anyone my heart because it didn't belong to me again yet. After she left, I thought that if I kept busy enough during the day I'd hopefully be too exhausted to think of 'who or what might have been' at night. For the most part it worked, or so I wanted to think. But then disaster struck. I was so busy punishing myself, I let Stella in, let her use the job as cover to hurt the one person I knew in my heart of hearts could help me heal; Lexie.

Oh, I know that I have only got myself to blame for my deservedly broken heart. How many times did I see the pain in Lexie's face as Katrina walked into a room? How many times did I hear the huge fights between Lexie & Stella & walk away, for the sake of a 'quiet life?' (which I never got anyway). How many times would I conveniently convince myself that their 'squabbles' were just because they were from different places, different backgrounds, or because Stella was an unwelcome outsider, intruding on Lexie's space & trying to change her way of life? I pushed those amazing, sweet kisses to the back of my memory (it's incredible how easily you can fool yourself if you really try!) Because I thought I wanted to, I mistook Lexie's 1-lines & acerbic wit for anger & self-confidence, when they really hid the pain I was causing her, by not admitting to myself or her, how I felt. I would even hear my name in those fights sometimes & still do nothing except pretend I was none the wiser try & smooth over the cracks.

Sometimes I would get SO mad with Stella that, the hell with Estate & the Bank & everything, the only thing that stopped me from slapping her would be that it would give away my feelings for Lexie. Where's the crime in that anyway?

Despite the fireworks, I'm ashamed to admit that, I was flattered to have 2 good-looking women fighting over my attention, what hot-blooded male wouldn't be? But that's no excuse. Even today when they were arguing today about the ball, I knew. Lexie backed down, not because she didn't want to go to the Ball (Duncan tells me she'd even hired a beautiful gown), but because she thought it was the right thing for her to do. When it was all going wrong she readily gave up on her dream night & stayed in the kitchen because she said that was where I needed her! To think I was taking her so that she wouldn't need to find out that that creep from the bank hated the meal that I now know Stella tricked her into cooking! How could I have been so selfish!

My God! There were even times when Stella would storm away from 'the fight' having won a round, & I'd actually walk away sometimes even hearing Lexie crying quietly behind me; only to come back later & pretend to be her friend! To think, I even told her she always be 'My Princess'! I called her 'My Princess' but treated her like some kind of poor Cinderella whose place was in the kitchen. Of all the dumb things I've done in my life, that has to be, without any doubt the most cruel & cowardly.

The fact that she still stayed by my shoulder (& gave me more than 'a run for my money' at times!) through all that, say more about guts, loyalty & friendship than words ever could. No-one could deny that Lexie is a good friend as a good housekeeper.

I suppose, partly what stopped me from acting before was what I knew exactly what my father's attitude would be (pompous as ever), & how furiously I would react to it. I realise now (too late of course), that I have done what was right for my family & Glen Bogle, when what I should have done was all that & what was right for me; seeing past the end of my nose & reaching out for Lexie. Nobody else's reaction should have been important enough to stop me from taking a chance on being happy, but now it has been.

The worst part, the part that will eat away at me, is that, even after all that, Lexie does love me! (Though God alone knows why!) She said so when she turned me down. All this time she has been willing to quietly stand at my shoulder, never once mentioning the time on the train, & watch as my foolishness slowly & painfully tore her dreams apart because she thought it was all for the best! Lexie refused to marry me because she honestly thinks she's not good enough to be the 'Laird's Wife'! She seems to think that the 'Laird's Wife' needs to be beautiful, graceful, clever & rich. Why can't she see that she is all of that & SO much more? If anything, with the appalling way I've treated her, she has proved herself over & over again to be far too good for an idiot like me!

Ok, so she may not have much money, but then again, she hasn't seen my personal bank book lately! As for intelligence, I have no idea if she's well read or not, but I do know it's far from easy running a house the size of this & yet she does it virtually single-handed. I have lost count of the amount of times that a guest has asked has either given or asked me to pass onto her their gratitude for how well she has treated them, the little extras that in some cases have meant a second visit. If she ever asked me to help her with the china I can guarantee it would end up all over the floor!

I should do more in the kitchen, I enjoyed helping out yesterday, it's what I'm trained for & it would take a little of the weight from Lexie's shoulders. After all, what's the point of being the Laird if you can't do what you enjoy every once in a while? And when it's useful so much the better. Mother could help out a little more to; not in the kitchen or with the antiques perhaps, but somehow. She all ready does a great job with the gardens. I'll think about it & talk to her.

This beautiful Estate (with all of its joys & problems), may be my inheritance & ultimately my responsibility now, but it is Lexie's home. She told me herself that Glen Bogle was the only place she'd ever thought of as home. (How could I ever have blocked out the pain I saw & heard in her that day?!) She's lived round here all her adult life, ever since my mother took her in as a homeless waif at fifteen, whereas I laid eyes on Glen Bogle as an adult just 3 years ago. She, Golly & Duncan unquestionably know more about 'my' land & its people than I could ever hope to. If she really wants to learn any of the things she thinks a Lady needs to know that she does not, why will she not let me help her? She doesn't realise I'd be learning to.

Our 'worlds' are not so far apart, not really. I just wish I knew of a way to get Lexie to see that! In a lot of ways my brother Jamie got all that, all the things Lexie thinks should separate us; the groundwork for being Laird. I, meanwhile, got to live a fairly normal life. I had a normal flat (in London, just about as far away from the whole Clan 'thing' as you could ever wish to get, which was the whole point), a fairly normal job & the normal responsibilities that go with all of that. Maybe that's why I'm never going to be quite good enough at this in my father's eyes. I might be my father's son, & he loves me (in his own way), & I love him but I was never meant to be his heir. That should have been Jamie's job & neither of us can ever really be expected to forget that. Sometimes I feel just as out of my depth as Laird as Lexie feels she would be as the Laird's wife.

Anyway, if only things had turned out differently & Lexie & I decided to learn, would curling up in my arms by a roaring fire in the study as I read Shelly, Keats or whatever to her, or she gave me a Scottish history lesson be too much of a hardship? Is the thought of perhaps a moonlight stroll around our loch (hand in hand), talking about anything that caught our interest, too unpalatable? I should hope not! But there's no point torturing myself about it now, is there? God knows, I've done enough of that since that nightmarish day in the loch to last anybody a lifetime!

As for beauty, grace, style, class & elegance, those Lexie has in spades, if only she would let herself see it! It took real class not to throw my faults back in my face just now, even though she would have well within her rights to do so! As for being attractive, well those beautiful eyes speak for themselves. Whether she's in jeans & a T-shirt doing the dusting or dressed as the bridesmaid for her mother's remarriage she's always looked stunning to me.

That black dress she wore this afternoon may not have not have been her ball gown, (I seem to remember Duncan saying something about that being red). But when she came striding confident & furious into that tent to explain everything, reorganise us all & save the day (yet again), I had never seen anybody more beautiful. (I hope I get to see her in that dress again someday.) Anything she feels she wants to refine in the way of acting, speaking or whatever my mother could surely help her with. But Lexie need never try to change for me; as far as I'm concerned she's perfect exactly the way she is.

Lexie's whole attitude today reminded me of an angry lioness protecting her cubs. Whatever about the rest of us, she was not going to give in without a fight & that was final! Unlike me, she'd been paying enough attention to what was going on around her to see who it was we were really fighting. When she spoke to me I could barely answer her for lack of breath, my words stumbled clumsily over themselves & I felt like my heart was about to break my ribs, it was pounding so hard! Countless times over these past three years my feelings for Lexie have had to be so obvious on my face, though no-one has ever mentioned it. I know for a fact that despite everything that's happened, both mother & Golly had my real number a while ago, so why didn't they talk some sense into me sooner?! (They probably thought I would have shouted them down & denied it & more than likely they would have been right).

But especially now that I have FINALLY come to my senses, I can't think for, or second-guess, my beautiful Lexie. I would never want to (though there's nothing I want more than for her to give us a chance). So, as leaving is impossible & she has the right to stay as well, I'll just turn around, walk back to the house, hide behind my Laird's mask, do the best I can to protect my heart & someday maybe…