Текст книги "Once Upon a Tartan"

Автор книги: Grace Burrowes

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Once Upon a Tartan
MacGregor Trilogy – 2
by
Grace Burrowes

To those struggling with grief. You grieve because you loved, and it’s the love that will abide.

One

When Tiberius Lamartine Flynn heard the tree singing, his first thought was that he’d parted company with his reason. Then two dusty little boots dangled above his horse’s abruptly nervous eyes, and the matter became a great deal simpler.

“Out of the tree, child, lest you spook some unsuspecting traveler’s mount.”

A pair of slim white calves flashed among the branches, the movement provoking the damned horse to dancing and propping.

“What’s his name?”

The question was almost unintelligible, so thick was the burr.

“His name is Flying Rowan,” Tye said, stroking a hand down the horse’s crest. “And he’d better settle himself down this instant if he knows what’s good for him. His efforts in this regard would be greatly facilitated if you’d vacate that damned tree.”

“You shouldn’t swear at her. She’s a wonderful tree.”

The horse settled, having had as much frolic as Tye was inclined to permit.

“In the first place, trees do not have gender, in the second, your heathen accent makes your discourse nigh incomprehensible, and in the third, please get the hell out of the tree.”

“Introduce yourself. I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.”

A heathen child with manners. What else did he expect from the wilds of Aberdeenshire?

“Tiberius Lamartine Flynn, Earl of Spathfoy, at your service. Had we any mutual acquaintances, I’d have them attend to the civilities.”

Silence from the tree, while Tye felt the idiot horse tensing for another display of nonsense.

“You’re wrong—we have a mutual acquaintance. This is a treaty oak. She’s everybody’s friend. I’m Fee.”

Except in his Englishness, Tye first thought the little scamp had said, “I’m fey,” which seemed appropriate.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Fee. Now show yourself like a gentleman, or I’ll think it’s your intent to drop onto hapless travelers and rob them blind.”

“Do you think I could?”

Dear God, the child sounded fascinated.

“Down. Now.” That tone of voice had worked on Tye’s younger brother until Gordie had been almost twelve. The same tone had ever been a source of amusement to his younger sisters. The branches moved, and Rowan tensed again, haunches bunching as if he’d bolt.

A lithe little shape plummeted at least eight feet to the ground and landed with a loud “Ouch!” provoking Rowan to rear in earnest.

* * *

From the ground, the horse looked enormous, and the man astride like a giant. Fee caught an impression of darkness—dark horse, dark riding clothes, and a dark scowl as the man tried to control his horse.

“That is quite enough out of you.” The man’s voice was so stern, Fee suspected the horse understood the words, for two large iron-shod hooves came to a standstill not a foot from her head.

“Child, you will get up slowly and move away from the horse. I cannot guarantee your safety otherwise.”

Still stern—maybe this fellow was always stern, in which case he was to be pitied. Fee sat up and tried to creep back on her hands, backside, and feet, but pain shot through her left ankle and up her calf before she’d shifted half her weight.

“I hurt myself.”

The horse backed a good ten feet away, though Fee couldn’t see how the rider had asked it to do so.

“Where are you hurt?”

“My foot. I think I landed on it wrong. It’s because I’m wearing shoes.”

“Shoes do not cause injury.” He swung off the horse and shook a gloved finger at the animal. “You stand, or you’ll be stewed up for the poor of the parish.”

“Are you always so mean, mister?”

He loomed above her, hands on his hips, and Fee’s Aunt Hester would have said he looked like The Wrath of God. His nose was a Wrath-of-God sort of nose, nothing sweet or humble about it, and his eyes were Wrath-of-God eyes, all dark and glaring.

He was as tall as the Wrath of God, too, maybe even taller than Fee’s uncles, who, if not exactly the Wrath of God, could sometimes be the Wrath of Deeside and greater Aberdeenshire.

As could her aunt Hester, which was a sobering thought.

“You think I’m mean, young lady?”

“Yes.”

“Then I must answer in the affirmative.”

She frowned up at him. From his accent, he was at least a bloody Lowlander, or possibly a damned Sassenach, but even making those very significant allowances, he still talked funny.

“What is a firmative?”

“Yes, I am mean. Can you walk?”

He extended a hand down to her, a very large hand in a black riding glove. Fee had seen some pictures in a book once, of a lot of cupids without nappies bouncing around with harps, and a hand very like that one, sticking out of the clouds, except the hand in the picture was not swathed in black leather.

“Child, I do not have all day to impersonate the Good Samaritan.”

“The Good Samaritan was nice. Hewent to heaven.”

“While it is mysorry fate to be ruralizing in Scotland.” He hauled Fee to her feet by virtue of lifting her up under the arms. He did this without effort, as if he hoisted five stone of little girl from the roadside for regular amusement.

“Do you ever smile?”

“When in the presence of silent, well-behaved, properly scrubbed children, I sometimes consider the notion. Can you put weight on that foot?”

“It hurts. I think it hurts because my shoe is getting too tight.”

He muttered something under his breath, which might have had some bad words mixed in with more of his pernickety accent, then lifted Fee to his hip. “I am forced by the requirements of good breeding and honor to endure your company in the saddle for however long it takes to return you to the dubious care of your wardens, and may God pity them that responsibility.”

“I get to ride your horse?”

“ Weget to ride my horse. If you were a boy, I’d leave you here to the mercy of passing strangers or allow you to crawl home.”

He might have been teasing. The accent made it difficult to tell—as did the scowl. “You thought I was boy?”

“Don’t sound so pleased. I thought you were a nuisance, and I still do. Can you balance?”

He deposited her next to the treaty oak, which meant she could stand on one foot and lean on the tree. “I want to take my shoes off.” He wrinkled that big nose of his, looking like he smelled something rank. “My feet are clean. Aunt Hester makes me take a bath every night whether I need one or not.”

This Abomination Against the Natural Order—another one of Aunt Hester’s terms—did not appear to impress the man. Fee wondered if anything impressed him—and what a poverty that would be, as Aunt would say, to go through the whole day without once being impressed.

He hunkered before her, and he was even tall when he knelt. “Put your hand on my shoulder.”

Fee complied, finding his shoulder every bit as sturdy as the oak. He unlaced her boot, but when he tried to ease it off her foot, she had to squeal with the pain of it.

“Wrenched it properly, then. Here.” He pulled off his gloves and passed them to her. “Bite down on one of those, hard enough to cut right through the leather, and scream if you have to. I have every confidence you can ruin my hearing if you make half an effort.”

She took the gloves, which were warm and supple. “Are you an uncle?”

“As it happens, this dolorous fate has befallen me.”

“Is that a firmative?”

“It is. Why?”

“Because you’re trying to distract me, which is something my uncles do a lot. I won’t scream.”

He regarded her for a moment, looking almost as if he might say something not quite so fussy, then bent to glare at her boot. “Suit yourself, as it appears you are in the habit of doing.”

She braced herself; she even put one of the riding gloves between her teeth, because as badly as her ankle hurt, she expected taking off her boot would cause the kind of pain that made her ears roar and her vision dim around the edges.

She neither screamed nor bit through the glove—which tasted like reins and horse—because before she could even draw in a proper breath, her boot was gently eased off her foot.

“I suppose you want the other one off too?”

“Is my ankle all bruised and horrible?”

“Your ankle is slightly swollen. It will likely be bruised before the day is out, but perhaps not horribly if we can get ice on it.”

“Are you a priest?”

“For pity’s sake, child. First an uncle, then a priest? What can you be thinking?” He sat her in the grass and started unlacing her second boot.

“You talk like Vicar on Sunday, though on Saturday night, he sounds like everybody else when he’s having his pint. If my ankle is awful, Aunt Hester will cry and feed me shortbread with my tea. She might even play cards with me. My uncles taught me how to cheat, but explained I must never cheat unless I’m playing with them.”

“Honor among thieves being the invention of the Scots, this does not surprise me.” He tied the laces of both boots into a knot and slung them around Fee’s neck.

“I’m a Scot.”

His lips quirked. Maybe this was what it looked like when the Wrath of God was afraid he might smile.

“My condolences. Except for your unfortunate red hair, execrable accent, and the layer of dirt about your person, I would never have suspected.” He lifted her up again, but this time carried her to Flying Rowan, who had stood like a good boy all the while the man had been getting Fee’s boots off.

“I have wonderful hair, just like my mama’s. My papa says I’m going to be bee-yoo-ti-full. My uncles say I already am.”

“What you are is impertinent and inconvenient, though one can hardly blame your hair on you. Up you go.” He deposited her in the saddle, bracing a hand around her middle until she had her balance.

“Oh, this is a wonderful adventure. May I have the reins?”

“Assuredly not. Lean forward.”

He was up behind her in nothing flat, but that just made it all the better. Flying Rowan was even taller than Uncle Ian’s gelding, and almost as broad as the plow horses. Having the solid bulk of an adult male in the saddle made the whole business safe, even as it was also exciting.

He nudged the horse forward. “Where I am taking you, child?”

Fee could feel the way he rode, feel the way he moved with the horse and communicated with the horse without really using the reins.

“Child?”

“That way.” She lifted her hand to point in the direction of the manor, feeling the horse flinch beneath her as she did. “If you go by way of the pastures, it’s shorter than the road.”

“How many gates?”

“Lots. Papa has a lot of doddies.”

“Has your upbringing acquainted you with the equestrian arts?”

He didn’t even sound like a priest. He sounded like nothing and no one Fee had ever heard before. His voice was stern but somehow beautiful too, even when he wasn’t making any sense at all. “I don’t know what equestrian arts are.”

“Do you ride horseback?” He spoke slowly, as if Fee were daft, which made her want to drive her elbow back into his ribs—though that would likely hurt her elbow.

“I don’t have a pony, but my uncles take me up when I pester them hard enough.”

“That will serve. Grab some mane and don’t squeal.”

He wrapped that big hand around her middle again, and urged the horse into a rocking canter. The wind blew Fee’s hair back, and it was hard not to squeal, so delightful was the sensation of flying over the ground.

“Hold tight.” This was nearly growled as the man leaned forward, necessitating that Fee lean forward too. In a mighty surge, the horse leapt up and over a stone wall, then thundered off across the pasture in perfect rhythm.

The sensations were magnificent, to be borne aloft for a timeless moment, to soar above the earth, to be safe and snug in the midst of flight.

“Do another one!” Fee called over her shoulder, even as the horse bore down on a second wall.

They did three more, cutting directly across the fields, leaving the cows to watch as the horse cantered by, the placid expressions of the bovines at such variance with the utter glee Fee felt at each wall.

When the man brought his horse down to a walk at the foot of the drive, she leaned forward and patted the gelding soundly on the shoulder. “Good fellow, Flying Rowan! Oh, that was the best! I will write to everybody and tell them what a good boy you are.” She lapsed into the Gaelic, too happy and excited not to praise the horse in a more civilized language than the stilted, stodgy English.

Behind her, she felt the man’s hard chest shift slightly, and she fell silent.

“Mama says it’s rude to speak the Gaelic when somebody else can’t.”

“I comprehend it. Is this your home?”

“I live here. Aunt Hester lives here too, but Mama and Papa are away right now.”

“Shall I take you around to the back?”

He was scowling at the manor as he spoke, as if the house wasn’t the most lovely place in the world, all full of flowers and pretty views.

“Here comes Aunt Hester. I expect she’ll want to thank you.”

Fee felt Rowan’s owner tense behind her. It wasn’t that his muscles bunched up, it was more that he went still. The horse beneath them went still too, as if both man and horse understood that the look on Aunt Hester’s face did not at all fit with Fee’s prediction of impending thanks.

* * *

A female thundercloud was advancing on Tye where he sat his gelding, the little girl perched before him. Beneath his hand, he felt the child’s spine stiffen and her bony little shoulders square.

This particular thundercloud had golden blond hair piled on top of her head, quite possibly in an attempt to give an illusion of height. She wore an old-fashioned blue walking dress, the dusty hems of which were swishing madly around her boots as she sailed across the drive.

He’d always liked the sound of a woman’s petticoats in brisk motion, they gave a man a little warning—and something to think about.

“I bid you good day.” He nodded from the saddle, a hat being a hopeless inconvenience when a man rode cross-country. “Spathfoy, at your service.”

Some perverse desire to see what she’d do next kept him on the horse, looking down at her from a considerable height.

“Hester Daniels.” She sketched a hint of a curtsy then planted her fists on her hips. “Fiona Ursula MacGregor, whatam I to do with you? Wherehave you gone off to this time, that a strange man must bring you home at a dead gallop, over field and fence, your hair a fright and—” The lady paused and drew in a tremendous breath. “ Whyare your boots hanging about your neck? Whathave I told you about running off barefoot, much less when you’re in the company of horses, and whenwill you remember that we eat meals at regular hours, in a civilized fashion, and whatdo you expect me to tell your dear mother about this latest escapade?”

When she fell silent, Tye was somewhat taken aback to see the lady’s eyes shining, quite possibly with tears.

“I am sorry,” said the girl, hanging her head. “I went to visit the oak, that’s all, and it was a fine afternoon for singing in a tree, and then I jumped down, but I landed wrong, and this fellow came along on Flying Rowan. I didn’t mean to hurt my foot, but we had such fun galloping home, didn’t we, sir?”

She turned around to spear him with big, pleading green eyes, leaving Tye feeling resentful, and perhaps… oh, something else too bothersome to parse at the moment.

“There now,” he said, smoothing a gloved hand over the child’s crown. “A very nice apology, and that should be an end to it. The child can’t be blamed for my horse’s loss of composure when finding himself beneath a singing tree. If anybody should be apologizing, it’s Rowan here.”

This was a ridiculous speech, attributing manners and morals to a mute and consistently self-interested beast, but it served to soften the lady’s ire. Her hands dropped from her hips, her breath left her in a gentle sigh, and her expression became one of exasperated affection. “Did you come a cropper, then, Fee?”

“She wrenched her ankle,” Tye said, swinging down. He was pleased to note that when standing, he was still a good deal taller than Miss Daniels, but then, he was a good deal taller than most everybody. “I’m happy to carry her inside, where some ice and a tisane might be in order.”

Before Miss Daniels could summon a servant for the task, Tye lifted Fiona out of the saddle. The child obligingly perched on his hip, batting those guileless green eyes at her aunt while a groom came to take Rowan.

Gordie had had such eyes, though the lack of guile was far more genuine in the child than it had ever been in the man.

“If you don’t mind carrying her,” Miss Daniels said, “I would be obliged. Fee is getting quite grown-up.”

“She means I’m too heavy.”

“You are a mere bagatelle.” He shifted her to a piggyback position. “Lead on please, madam. The bagatelle has to be in some discomfort.”

But the girl did not complain, which was interesting. She settled in on Tye’s back, resting her cheek against his nape. “I like being a bagatelle. Do bagatelles sing?”

“This one does, and she chatters,” Tye said. “Incessantly.” Though she was also at the braids-and-pinafores stage of her development, so he limited his rebuke.

“I know what that means. I’m trying to make small talk. Why do we call it small talk? It’s the same size as other talk, at least other talk inside the house. Is there such a thing as large talk?”

She huffed out a sigh while Tye followed Miss Daniels into the house. The dwelling was a tidy Tudor manor that looked to be laid out in the typical Tudor E, gardens overflowing with flowers all about the place and even in window boxes on the upper stories. The mullioned windows were sparkling, the gravel walks tidily raked, and the terraces neatly swept.

Which was… not disappointing, exactly, but not what Tye had been expecting.

“I hope this isn’t too great an inconvenience,” Miss Daniels said as Tye carried his burden into a cozy library. “I’ll ring for refreshment as soon as we have Fee settled.”

“May I have some refreshment?” the child asked.

Miss Daniels frowned at the girl clinging to Tye’s back like a monkey. “You nipped out before breakfast, Fee, and missed luncheon. No doubt you pilfered some scones, but you’ll make a pig of yourself at tea and ruin your supper entirely.”

“I’ll have one sandwich. Just one. Please, Aunt Hester?”

Tye had no doubt the winsome green eyes were working their wiles over his shoulder, but really, an active child couldn’t go all day on a just a few scones.

“We might take our tea in here,” Tye said, shifting the girl to seat her on the sofa. “It’s a pleasant room with a nice view of the back gardens.”

“Oh, very well.” Miss Daniels looked unhappy with her capitulation, but moved off to speak with a footman at the doorway. Tye looked about, spotted a hassock, and moved to place it before Fiona. He tossed a throw pillow onto the hassock and pointed.

“Get your foot up, child. It will help contain the swelling.”

“But then it won’t look horrid enough.”

“And it won’t feel quite so horrid either. Besides, you’ve already winkled tea and crumpets out of your aunt, and that after playing truant the entire day. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

God in heaven, he’d sounded just like his father.

“You should not have used foul language.”

“I should not—” He closed his mouth. The impertinent little baggage was right, though foul language was a simple enough pleasure in a life where pleasure was otherwise in short supply. “I do beg your pardon. I was overset.”

“You were not.” She grabbed a green-and-black tartan blanket from the back of the sofa. “Grown-up men don’t get overset, though they do get soused. Aunt taught me that word, but I’m not to use it around company.”

He stared at the child. Treated the little minx to a gimlet gaze that had settled overspending distant relations without a word.

She winked at him. “We’re even now.”

“The tea tray will be along shortly,” Miss Daniels said, sweeping back into the room. “Won’t you have a seat, Mr. Spathfoy?”

She betrayed her Englishness with the lapse—it was a Scottish title, after all, and a Scottish courtesy title at that. Her lack of familiarity with it confirmed suspicions originating in her proper southern speech and pretty company manners.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Daniels, I am the Earlof Spathfoy.” He waited with some interest to see how she’d react to her faux pas.

“I do apologize, my lord. Shall we be seated?”

No blush, no stammering, no glancing all around or scolding him for not initially introducing himself properly.

Seeing no alternative, Tye sat, taking a wing chair flanking the sofa where the Duchess of Singing Trees reclined in grand estate. Miss Daniels took a second wing chair and turned a considering look on her niece. “I’m going to have to send a note to Uncle Ian at least, Fee. He might wire your mama and papa.”

“Will they come home to see if I’m alive?”

“They will come home when they’ve completed their journey. They hardly had time for a wedding journey, so you must not begrudge them their travels this summer.” She shot the child a speaking glance, as if visually reminding the girl not to argue before company.

Though Tye would enjoy seeing the two of them go at it. His money would be on the girl. “Where are they traveling?” he asked, mostly to break a growing silence.

“All over,” Fiona said, slumping back on a dramatic sigh. “First Paris, then Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Venice, Florence and Rome. Madrid and Lisbon, then home again. I had a cat named Florence once. She ran off with a handsome marmalade fellow named Beowulf.”

“This will be quite a journey.” And quite a convenient development, given Tye’s plans.

“Mary Fran and Matthew have been married a year,” Miss Daniels said. “Their first priority was establishing a home here, near Mary Frances’s family, but she has longed to see some of the Continent, and I was available to stay with Fiona while they traveled, so here we are.”

She gave him a bright, false smile, and it occurred to him that he was in the presence of a Poor Relation. Miss Daniels was young, pretty, not sporting a ring on the fourth finger of her left hand, and by rights ought to be in London, trying to flirt herself up a decent match.

Instead she was here in Aberdeenshire, during the only months that location boasted pretensions to decent weather, idling away her youth with a child who sang to trees. A bleak prospect indeed, but a penniless female was at the mercy of the rest of her family.

“Have you written to your parents, Fiona?” He put the question to the child, though making polite conversation with the infantry was not a skill he’d ever aspired to.

“I write to them every other day, but that’s mostly so Aunt Hester can say I’ve practiced my penmanship.” She regarded her propped foot. “I miss them.”

Such a plaintive expression accompanied this declaration that Tye felt an unwelcome urge to comfort the child. Very unwelcome.

“We’ll stay busy,” Miss Daniels said. “The weeks will pass quickly, and then they’ll be home.”

“And then at Christmas, we’ll have a new baby!” As melancholy as the girl had been an instant ago, she was that gleeful with news of her coming half sibling. “I hope it’s a boy so I can teach him how to fish and make mud pies.”

“Fiona.” Miss Daniels put a wealth of repression in three syllables, and Tye was intrigued to see the lady was blushing hotly, right up her neck and both cheeks, which was almost as interesting as the news that Fiona’s mother was again on the nest.

Within one year of marriage, no less. The woman was nothing if not an easy breeder. The food arrived before Tye could dwell on that unhappy subject, and Miss Daniels launched into a recitation of all the books Fiona might read while allowing her foot to heal. A chambermaid appeared with a bowl of ice and a set of towels, and Miss Daniels interrupted her litany of books to make a fuss doctoring the child’s ailing foot. Tye used the time to fill the pit in his stomach with scrumptious ham-and-cheddar sandwiches and a delectable array of small tea cakes.

“You enjoy a hearty appetite, my lord.”

He pause midreach toward the last chocolate tea cake, wondering if that was censure or amusement in Miss Daniels’s voice. She was nibbling on a tea cake too, and while he watched, the pink tip of her tongue peeked out of the corner of her mouth to lick a dab of white frosting from her lip.

“The fresh country air and a tidy little gallop have left me peckish. Then too, I have been traveling for some time.” Though the fresh country air was also addling his brain if he’d taken to staring at a decent woman’s mouth.

“Were you in Florence?” That from the child, who was reaching for another sandwich. He met her gaze and realized she knew damned good and well she was exceeding her own stated limit of one sandwich.

“I have been in Florence, though not recently. A lovely city, if hot.” And somewhat unfragrant, like many of the European capitals, including—emphatically—dear old London towne.

“My uncle Asher is in Canada.” The girl took a bite of her second sandwich. “He went there when I wasn’t even a baby, but I love him. My uncles are the best.”

The child’s words were a providential opening. Before Miss Daniels could nibble more frosting, before the child could cadge a third sandwich, Tye decided it was the only opening he was likely to have, and it was past time he presented himself honestly.

“Your uncles are the best?”

Fee nodded emphatically. “The very, very best. Especially Uncle Ian, because he looks after all of us—he’s an earl—but all my uncles are capital fellows.”

“It’s fortunate you feel that way, because I myself am among their number.”

* * *

Hester had taken their guest for a Scot at first, in part because of his glorious size. He appeared to enjoy the breeding of many a Scot, a cross of dark Celtic good looks with Viking scale and muscle.

He inhabited his body like a Scot too, comfortable and rangy, at ease with both his proportions and his strength. Watching him ride across the pastures, she’d envied Fee, thinking at first that Ian had perhaps cantered over for a surprise visit and was treating his niece to a taste of adventure.

But then he’d spoken, and that voice… Spathfoy should be a mesmerist, with a voice like that. The English public school consonants were present, all crisply started, neatly executed, and cleanly finished off, but in the vowels there lurked something… more. Something suggestive of foreign antecedents and earthy inclinations. She could listen to that voice like a lullaby.

Except… he formed words, not just spoken music, and he’d said something extraordinary.

“I beg your pardon, my lord. Did you just pronounce yourself to be among Fiona’s uncles?”

“I did. I am the older brother of Fiona’s late father, and very pleased to make my niece’s acquaintance.”

The great beast of a man was lying—not about being Fee’s uncle, but about being pleased. He even sounded beautiful when he lied—beautiful and believable. Oh, he’d done the proper thing and made sure Fee got safely home when she’d hurt her ankle, but the proper thing and the convenient thing were sometimes separated merely by the intention motivating the same act.

“Fiona would make her curtsy to you, I’m sure, but for her indisposition. I don’t suppose you were merely in the area and calling upon a relation?”

Fiona shifted amid her pillows. “I don’t know you. I know my uncles.”

“I have been remiss in not calling before, but I reside primarily in London, which is some distance away.” He looked directly at Fee while he spoke, and this, Hester realized, was part of his… not charm. He wasn’t in any case charming, but part of his attraction. He had moss-green eyes, startlingly green, fringed with long, dark lashes. They imparted a sensual air to an otherwise austere countenance, and suggested the truth of the man was in that voice, in the caress and lilt of it, rather than in the stern features.

“You are here now,” Hester said, though she was wishing it were otherwise, and that probably showed in her voice.

Fiona peered up at his lordship. “ Whyare you here now?”

For an instant, something flickered through lordly green eyes, impatience, maybe, or resentment. Or—a remote possibility—surprise, that a little girl would not remain silent and passive in the presence of this titled uncle.

“I am addressing a previous oversight. I’d written to Altsax of my intent, but he has apparently gone traveling with his lady. I will call upon Lord Balfour at the earliest opportunity in Altsax’s absence.”

“Papa doesn’t use the title.” Fee was frowning a particularly worried frown, and Hester could only imagine what was going through the child’s mind.

She passed her niece the last tea cake and served up a reassuring smile with it. “After such a trying day, Fiona, you should probably rest for a bit. Would you like a book?”

“ Robinson Crusoe, please.” The please was an oddment, an indication of tension caused by Spathfoy’s bald announcement, and the choice of story was the mental equivalent of reaching for a favorite doll.

Hester got down the book, noting that Spathfoy had gone quiet, probably the better to plan his next broadside.

“My lord, may I request a turn in the garden on your arm? The day is lovely, and Mary Frances takes great pride in her flowers.” The request was as polite as Hester could manage, but her temper—her blasted, perishing temper, which had never been a problem until this self-imposed banishment to Scotland—was threatening to gallop off with her manners.

“But of course.” He rose to his impressive height, looking handsome and proper. There wasn’t a single crumb on his breeches, and his hair looked artfully windblown, not as if he was given to pelting over fences willy-nilly.

Hester led him to the gardens, lecturing herself all the while about decorum, Highland hospitality, and making good first impressions. When Spathfoy inquired as to whether “the child” had a governess, tutors, or music instructors, she did not wallop him across his arrogant cheek.

She limited her wrath to a mere ladylike tongue lashing, but she made as thorough a job of it as momentary inspiration and vicarious maternal instinct could muster—which was very thorough indeed.

* * *

Where a prim little bit of poor relation had stood before, a raging tempest now boiled.