Royals (Royals #1)(16)
Ellie’s only reply to that is a very eloquent eye roll, but at least she sits back a little and stops clenching her fingers in her lap. “The point is, I want you to know that—”
Looking out the windshield, her eyes go wide, and I turn to follow her glance, only to find my own jaw dropping.
We’re coming up a narrow dirt road, and at the end, there isn’t a castle but a low stone farmhouse, pretty and perfect with a slate roof and green hills rolling in the background. It’s like something out of a fairy tale, but that’s not what has me and Ellie staring.
It’s the line of pipers in kilts outside the house.
There are at least twenty guys standing there, bagpipes at the ready, and as the car approaches, there’s this . . . blast of sound.
Even with the windows up, it’s loud enough to make my teeth rattle, and that first wheezing note as they all fire up at once makes me cover my ears even as I grin and look over at Ellie.
“Oh my god,” I say, but she ignores me, leaning forward to say to the driver, “This isn’t Sherbourne!”
She has to shout, that’s how loud the bagpiping is, and the driver raises his voice to reply, “This was the location I was given, ma’am!”
“I mean, obviously, El,” I say, elbowing her in the side. “Isn’t this the welcome you get everywhere?”
I honestly think she’d tell me to shut up, but that’s not very princess-y, so she settles for shooting me a look as the car pulls to a stop in front of the line of pipers.
Then we both just sit there for a second.
The music is still going, and now that they’re really into it—I realize now they’re not playing some traditional Scottish tune but a version of “Get Lucky,” which is . . . something—it’s really not bad. It’s kind of cool, actually, and I suddenly wonder if maybe I should pick up the bagpipes while I’m here. Now that would be a hobby to bring back to Florida.
“Shall I get the door, ma’am?” the driver asks, and I look over at El.
“If we open the door, it might actually be loud enough to kill us,” I say, and my sister grimaces, her hand flexing on the seat next to us.
“Picture it, El,” I tell her. “‘FUTURE QUEEN OF SCOTLAND AND FAR SUPERIOR YOUNGER SISTER KILLED IN TRAGIC MUTUAL HEAD EXPLOSION—PIPERS HELD IN CUSTODY.’”
She doesn’t laugh, but she does relax a little. “You are so weird,” she mutters, but then she opens the door and steps out.
I do the same, and I was right—the sound nearly rocks me back on my heels. There are twenty pipers exactly, ten flanking each side of the low, shallow steps leading up into the farmhouse. They’re all beautifully dressed in bright red kilts, sashes over their chests, and thick wool socks covering muscular calves.
I don’t want to be impressed, especially since these guys just nearly deafened me, but I kind of can’t help it. It’s just . . . we’re standing in front of this gorgeous stone house, behind which is this perfect valley full of soft, buttery light, and now we’ve been greeted by twenty—twenty!—literal pied pipers, and I can’t help but laugh, shaking my head.
“I get the princess thing now,” I tell Ellie. “For real. I might try to marry a prince, too, just so these guys can announce me showing up to, like, the mall.”
Ellie cuts her eyes at me before flicking her hair over her shoulders. “I’m still not sure why we’re here and not at Sherbourne,” she says in a low voice.
“Have we been kidnapped?” I ask in a near whisper, but before Ellie can tell me to get bent or whatever the new, Fancy Ellie version of that is, there’s another screech of bagpipes.
This time it definitely doesn’t come from the gentlemen in front of us, and unlike the song earlier, it doesn’t suddenly resolve itself into a recognizable melody. This is an actual assault on eardrums, and I look around, trying to figure out where it’s coming from.
The pipes get louder, and suddenly there are two guys basically skipping out the front door and down the steps.
They’re in kilts like the professional pipers, but their socks are pooling around their ankles and one of them is wearing an insane hat that sort of looks like a beret but has a sharp purple feather jutting out of it. He’s about my height, with shaggy dark hair, and then I glance over at the other guy and realize he looks nearly identical.
There are two cute boys in kilts murdering bagpipes and dancing toward us.
“Did we take drugs in the car?” I ask Ellie, but then the boys are there, and one of them spins in front of me before dipping into a low bow.
“Ladies!” he says as his twin gives Ellie the same treatment, his twirl so intense that for a second, I’m afraid I’m going to learn exactly what boys wear underneath their kilts.
Ellie gives a startled laugh. “Stephen?” she asks the boy in front of her before glancing at the one still bowing to me. “Donald? What—”
“Ellie!”
Oh, thank god. It’s Alex coming out the door now, and he’s wearing pants.
I never thought I’d be so relieved to see pants.
Alex is the closest thing to chagrined I’ve ever seen him as he rushes down the steps toward my sister, and when he gets to her and literally takes her in his arms, I wait for the bagpipes to start up again.