Текст книги "Once Upon a Tartan"
Автор книги: Grace Burrowes
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 20 страниц)
Seven
To go by inches, to make no move until he was positive she desired him to make it was different… sweet, and precious in ways Tye did not want to examine too closely. He focused instead on Hester, on the rise and fall of her chest, on her fingers winnowing through his hair when he ran his nose down her sternum.
He’d neglected this before—he’d neglected a great deal having to do with her pleasure and her enjoyment of his attentions. Stupid of him to ignore such a lovely feast, to deny himself such pleasure.
In a single, slow caress, he shifted her clothing aside, baring one lovely, full breast. Hester closed her eyes and let her head fall back. Tye took it for an invitation and closed his mouth over her pink, ruched nipple.
“Oh, Tiberius.”
He’d never heard his name spoken in such voluptuous tones. When he drew on her gently with his mouth, she groaned and arched toward him.
She might not have the words to make intimate demands on him, but her body was eloquent with need. Hester sighed, she squirmed, she pulled his hair, and more than once, Tye felt a wool sock stroking over his bare arse. Before she could drive him to utter madness, he rose up and kissed her mouth again.
She’d caught the more languorous rhythm of his lovemaking, caught it and was offering it back to him in slow undulations of her body against his. He kissed her onto her back, and she went easily, cradling his jaw when he rested his cheek against her breastbone.
“I cannot think when you are with me like this, Tiberius. I don’t ever want to think again. My wits—”
He brushed his fingers over her mouth. “Thinking isn’t required of either of us right now.” Thank God. Nor was propriety, nor was proper deportment. What was called for was an impressive display of shamelessness on both of their parts.
He sat back, surveying her where she sprawled on the chaise. Her clothing was frothed around her, her hair fell about her in golden disarray, and firelight gilded her bare skin. She watched him with slumberous eyes, but when he moved her clothing aside, exposing not just her breasts but her sex as well, she did not move.
To resist what was before him, even for a few instants, was excruciating. “What I need from you, Hester, is for you to enjoy yourself.” He’d never said such a thing to any woman, which in hindsight was remiss of him. He reached behind her, grabbed a pillow, and stuffed it under his knees.
Her eyes were going wide as he bent his head and brushed his thumb over her curls. “You may scream if you like. There’s nobody in this wing to hear you, save myself, and I will enjoy the sound of your passion.”
He enjoyed the taste of it as well. She was sweet and clean, bearing the scent of lavender even here, laced with the fragrance of a willing woman. While he nuzzled her curls, he felt her hand land in his hair. When he shifted her legs over his shoulders and drew his tongue up the damp length of her sex, that hand fell away on a sigh.
Earning her trust took time. It took long, lovely minutes while he traced each fold with his tongue and flirted a finger shallowly into her damp heat. It took the occasional stroke of his palms over her breasts, it took listening for what provoked her sighs and what—exactly—tempted her to minutely flex her spine.
He was distracted by the music of her aroused body, almost to the point where he could ignore the pulse throbbing in his cock and the soft brush of wool against his back.
He settled his mouth over the center of her pleasure and built a rhythm based on the undulations of her hips, the sound of her sighs, the feel of her body opening itself to pleasure.
She didn’t scream. When her moment came, Tye sank his fingers into her heat, and she convulsed around him almost silently. Low sounds of pleasure came from her throat, and she bowed up to clutch at him while pleasure wracked her. The spasms of her release reverberated through his body, going on and on until he kept the need to spend at bay by sheer force of will.
When Hester lay back, panting and rosy, Tye brought himself off in a few quick strokes against her mons. His seed jetted onto the pale expanse of her belly, leaving him physically spent and more than a little surprised at his own behavior.
He subsided between her legs, letting himself frankly stare at the lovely, wet, pink flesh of her sex. Time enough later to be shocked at the intimacy of what they’d just done, time enough to wonder where such carnal behavior and the trust it required had come from.
He kissed her knee, nuzzled her sex once, rested his cheek on her thigh, and closed his eyes.
* * *
Hester was sure etiquette existed for when a man was going to sleep between a lady’s legs, his seed drying on her belly, and her vocabulary sent begging by intimacies too unimaginable to contemplate.
Tiberius would know the words for what he’d just done to her, probably know them in several languages. She traced the curve of his ear with her fingers.
“What is the Latin term?”
“It’s vulgar and translates to something like ‘he who licks a particular part of a woman’s anatomy.’ Do not move.”
He rose looking disoriented. The sight of him thus—naked, his arousal fading, his hair going in all directions as a result of Hester’s disarrangement of it—was disconcertingly dear.
He reappeared with a cloth in his hand and resumed his place kneeling between her legs. “This is not what I had planned, Hester Daniels.” He swabbed briskly at her belly then more carefully at her sex. “You tempt me beyond the call of reason.”
“Do I really?” What a lovely notion.“You tempt me too, Tiberius.”
He pitched the rag away and stood scowling down at her. “A man’s sense of self-possession is important to him, or it ought to be.”
Hester hiked up on her elbows and regarded him as he tried to be stern and proper, his hair sticking up, not a stitch on him. With a flash of insight, she realized he wasn’t afraid, nor was he anything approaching embarrassed, but he was uncertain. The idea that he, of all men, would suffer such insecurity was untenable.
She pushed up to a sitting position, which put her at eye level with a part of his anatomy that was curiously unassuming in its present state, and just plain curious by any lights.
“Tiberius?” Hester caught him by one wrist and tugged him a step closer. “My self-possession is important to me too.” She leaned forward enough to rest her cheek over his soft, damp genitals. Two could play at the business of being shocking, though it wasn’t her aim to disconcert him.
She wanted to reassure him, in fact, and to regain that sense of closeness with him she’d enjoyed before he went haring off in search of a damp cloth and his dignity. His hand gathered her hair and draped it over her shoulder.
“Is it? Then you will accept my apology for taking the kind of liberties a man does not appropriate with marriageable women. It was not my intent to offend you.”
She was tempted to take him in her mouth. To taste him and learn what pleased him. But the dratted man wanted words now, words and coherent sentences and maybe just a touch of reassurance.
Of appreciation.
“I am not offended.” She kissed him low on his belly, the hair at his groin tickling her chin. “If marriageable women are denied the kind of pleasure you just gifted me with, then I pity them as a race.”
“Hester?” Her name on his lips had a controlled quality.
She sighed against his skin, wondering why pleasure made her drowsy while it made him loquacious. “Hmm?”
“Nothing.” He scooped her up against his chest, her nightgown and wrapper floating to the floor. “You are a remarkable woman.”
“I’m a tired woman. You have worn me out, Tiberius.”
He settled her onto the bed and stood back, his expression hard to read in the waning firelight.
“For pity’s sake, Tye, come to bed. It’s time for my vocabulary lesson.”
To her relief, he put one knee on the mattress. He’d needed to be invitedto share her bed, which was interesting.
“Would you rather go back to your own bed?” She held the covers up for him to scoot in next to her. “I hardly know how to go on in this situation. I rely on you to establish the rules.”
He fluffed the pillows and got off the bed, which Hester took for a delaying tactic. When he returned, he carried her nightclothes and his robe, all of which he laid across the foot of the bed. “There are no rules, Hester, other than the ones we establish. I think one rule ought to be you don’t ask me to teach you naughty language.”
“I’ll ask Aunt Ariadne, then.” Except then Aunt would retaliate with questions of her own.
“You’ll do no such thing.” In an instant, he’d gone from tidily laying out their nightclothes to blanketing her with his naked frame. “If you’re to be acquiring a command of indecent terms, you’ll acquire it exclusively from me.”
She smoothed a hand over his hair. “I’d like that. Now get under the covers. You’ll catch your death strutting around in the altogether with your hair damp. Are you trying to flaunt your wares, Tiberius?”
He rolled off of her, lifted the covers over his body, and lay back against the pillows. “Yes, I am. I am flaunting my wares shamelessly. Are you tempted?”
He sounded amused despite himself—if a little exasperated—and this pleased her, to think she could make him smile even if the damned man wouldn’t actually show it. “I am impressed.” She rolled over to her side lest he see hersmile. Behind her, she felt Tye shifting on the mattress, and then a voice sounded very near her ear.
“ Cunnilingus.”
She drew his arm around her waist and snuggled her backside into the lee of his body. There was no point trying to disguise the laughter that lit her from within, no point hiding her pleasure in the answering humor she felt reverberating through him, either.
* * *
How did a man clarify that he’d come to propose marriage when a woman’s mouth was inches from his ill-behaved cock? Tye considered this question as he wrapped himself around his naked, laughing, prospective marchioness.
The answer was simple: he didn’t.He hadn’t, in any case. He’d been too busy resisting the temptation to sink his hand into the golden glory of Hester’s unbound hair and guide her mouth a few inches lower.
“Tell me about your sisters, Tiberius. I see you are a faithful correspondent to them.”
His sisters? Hester was naked in his arms on a commodious, soft bed, and she wanted to talk about his sisters. Very well—sisters were not a topic that far removed from marriage.
“I am blessed with three, all younger. They take after our mother in that they are very sociable.”
“Unlike you.” She turned her head to kiss his biceps where he’d threaded an arm under her neck.
“Unlike—?” He kissed her nape in retaliation. “If I were any more sociable at the present moment, madam, you’d be wearing my ring.”
“Tiberius, did no one ever tease you?”
“Gordie.” The admission was out, a truth, not a comfortable one.
“Tell me about him. All I know is he ruined Mary Fran, and then had to be brought up to scratch by the combined forces of his superior officers and the old Earl of Balfour.”
“Gordie was not happy in the military.” Another admission. “He said the army was changing and no longer a fit place to stash superfluous younger sons and other ne’er-do-wells. He would have done very well as my father’s heir.”
The words hung in the darkness, something between a shame and a regret, though the truth didn’t sound half so awful aloud as Tye had always thought it would.
Hester turned out of his embrace and lay on her other side, so she was facing him. “How can you say such a thing?”
“It’s simply a fact. Gordie liked to tool about the countryside, calling on the neighbors, visiting in the churchyard. He could talk politics with my father all night and knew the names of every yeoman ever to raise a chicken on Flynn property.”
She pushed his hair off his brow, an oddly soothing caress. “And you don’t?”
“I’m not much for visiting.”
This caused her lips to quirk up in that secret, feminine smile Tye was coming to watch for. “I’d say you visit rather well.”
She shifted again—she wasn’t the most restful bed partner—and wrestled Tye into her embrace. He allowed it, though permitting a woman to cuddle him was a novel addition to his intimate repertoire. When he was wrapped in her arms, his cheek pillowed on her breast, his nose full of lavender and lemon verbena, she stroked his hair back off his face.
A slow, pleasurable caress that should have been soothing, though Tye’s reproductive apparatus was not exactly soothed. Before she could return to the topic of his sisters—or, God help him, his parents—Tye decided to advance his artillery on the main objective.
“Do you ever consider marriage, Hester?”
She yawned, which had the effect of raising then lowering the feminine pillow beneath Tye’s cheek. “Not happily.”
“Don’t you want children?” Even his sisters admitted to wanting children, though Joan was adamant her artistic and fashion endeavors had to come first.
“Of course I want children.” Her reply held not a hint of banter. “Every woman is raised to want a family and a home of her own, and I’m no different, except my parents’ union was not happy. My sister is so much more vivacious than I am, so much prettier—she’s tall, you know—I accept that I might have to settle for being a doting aunt.”
“Your sister could not be any more attractive than you are, Hester Daniels.” He hadn’t meant it to sound like a scold, but he’d seen Miss Eugenia Daniels in more than one ballroom. “There’s a difference between pretty and attractive.”
“That is the oddest compliment, but I think you mean it.”
He didn’t exactly kiss her breast, but he opened his mouth against her skin and breathed in the fragrance of her. “Pretty fades in time, and women who rely on their looks alone can all too easily become pathetic, like a man who relies exclusively on his title. You have bottom and sense.”
“Now if only I were seventeen two hands and broke to the bridle, hmm?”
Bottom and sense were to Tye high praise, but it struck him as he nuzzled her breast that Hester Daniels also had a bruised, if not broken, heart. He lifted his head and rolled to his back. “Come here, Hester. If we’re to indulge in the equestrian analogies—which I do not encourage, mind you—then you can mount up.”
She regarded him curiously in the dim light but obliged him, straddling his hips and curling down onto his chest.
He undertook to organize her hair. “Why should you have to settle for being a doting aunt? Why not marry?”
Why not marry me?Except winning the argument in the general case before he put a specific opportunity before her seemed the more sensible course.
She was quiet so long, Tye thought she might have fallen asleep. “I was not… I did not exercise good sense when Jasper proposed to me. I let him conduct a hasty, quiet courtship, allude to an agreement with my father, and imposehimself upon me, all without protest on my part. Marriage is designed to make women stupid. We are supposed to be willing to do anything to gain that prize. I see this now.”
For God’s sake, it was exactly the argument his sisters made, frequently and at great volume. They insisted on the right to choose, said the church itself did not countenance women being forced to marry, and flounced off to the next house party completely oblivious to the marquess’s draconian views on the matter.
“But you want children, Hester, and I think you would make a fine mother.”
She cuddled closer and pressed her nose against his throat. “This is a very peculiar discussion to have with you, Tiberius. I did not realize you would excel at prying confidences from me.”
Nor had that been his objective, but another part of him wanted to hear her confidences. “I didn’t discuss Gordie with anybody until I came up here.”
“And then Fee got to you, didn’t she?” Hester shifted on him, letting him have more of her weight. “She no doubt had you maundering on about your late brother, and you all unsuspecting. She’s gotten to me too, and this is the reason why I will eventually waver on the idea of marriage. I love that child. I would die to protect her, and if we discount last summer, I’ve known her only a handful of weeks. She is that dear.”
“ Dieto protect her?”
“You would too.” She sounded sleepy but sure of her point.
He didn’t argue—a gentleman never argued with a lady—though marrying Hester hardly equated to offering his life for his niece. Instead of arguing, he stroked his hand over the warm, delicate planes of the lady’s back, tracing her bones and muscles, learning her geography by touch.
When he realized he’d let the silence stretch for some minutes, he offered another point for her consideration: “Your husband would give you children, Hester.” A high card, he hoped. “He’d provide for you and those children, keep you safe and comfortable all your days.”
She said nothing. While her breathing evened out and she became a warm, trusting weight on his body, Tye reveled in the chance to explore her. He could reach the delectable curves of her derriere, trace the knobs and bumps of her spine, turn his nose and catch the flowery fragrance of her hair.
He fell asleep trying to find the right words to ask her—ask her in all seriousness—if she might consider marriage, were he to be the one providing her those children.
* * *
Hester awoke feeling safe, warm, and happy. The contentment was a bone-deep bodily awareness, spectacular in its pervasiveness.
“Not only do you have sense and bottom”—a large, warm hand squeezed Hester’s fundament—“but you excel at the marital art of sharing a bed. Good morning.”
Tiberius Flynn, the Earl of Spathfoy, was wrapped around her in all his naked glory. In all of theirnaked glory. What did one say under such circumstances?
“Good morning, my lord.”
“Miss Daniels.”
She did not dare turn over to peer at him. “Are you laughing at me, Spathfoy?”
“I am cuddling with you, much to my surprise—and delight, of course.”
His voice sounded convincingly serious. Hester peeked over her shoulder and found his green eyes were dancing with suppressed mischief.
“Dratted man.” Wonderful man. Wonderful, warm man, holding her close and making her day start with such a sense of well-being. “The rain has stopped.”
“Ah, the weather. How it gratifies me to know my lovemaking, or perhaps my mere presence in your bed, reduces you to platitudes. And here I took you for the daring sort.”
“You are so naughty. Teach me another word if you don’t want to discuss the weather.”
That shut him up. It chased him from the bed in fact, which was a pity. Hester heard him cross the room, then heard a stream hit the bottom of the chamber pot behind the privacy screen.
She blushed. She listened, and she blushed. When Spathfoy came back to the bed, she caught a minty whiff of tooth powder.
“Will you marry me, Hester Daniels?” He spooned himself around her, making the entire mattress bounce in the process. “I’ve never spent the night with a woman before. I find it rather agrees with me.”
“You have an untapped capacity for the ridiculous, Spathfoy.” Now shegot out of the bed, having to struggle a bit to escape his hold. She grabbed the first piece of clothing she could find—his dressing gown—and wiggled into it before leaving the bed. She didn’t need to use the chamber pot, thank a merciful God, but she did avail herself of the tooth powder.
He’d appropriated her toothbrush. Hester set the thing back into the cup that held it and stared.
This was intimacy, to share a toothbrush, to wake together. Last night had been intimate too, but it wasn’t the sexual thrill Hester would miss when Spathfoy departed.
She would miss him—cozy and casual in the morning, laughing with her in the bed, whispering unpronounceable naughty words into her ear, and running his hand over her backside in the most proprietary fashion as she fell asleep on his chest.
Intimacy with him was wonderful, thrilling, and precious at once. She very much feared this combination of feelings was what vapid young ladies alluded to when they said they were smitten with a man.
In love with him.
She felt an abrupt urge to cry, ignored it, and twisted her hair into a thick braid instead.
“What are you doing back there?” Spathfoy’s voice floated from the direction of the bed. “I propose marriage, and you must see to your toilette?”
“Stop teasing me, Spathfoy.” She emerged from the privacy screen while tying a ribbon around the end of her braid. “You used my tooth powder.”
“Come here, and I shall kiss you, then you’ll appreciate my larceny. I could have done that for you.”
He was regarding her braid narrowly. Hester stopped her advance before she got within range of his long arms. “Why aren’t you leaping up, wishing me good day, and scampering off to your own quarters? The sun will soon be up, Spathfoy.”
He looked amused, and perhaps he had cause. His dressing gown hung nearly to the floor on her, swallowing her up in its vast, comfortable folds. Then she realized he was peering at her socks, the only article of clothing to survive the night’s festivities in a proper location.
“The sun will be up soon,” he said, stretching out on his side, “but the servants know to leave the trays outside our doors, Miss Daniels. Stop grousing at me and get back in this bed.” He patted the mattress as if he had every right to invite her into her own bed.
“You will not blame me, sir, if you’re found here in flagrante delictoand we are forced to marry.” She attempted to flounce onto the bed, though his dressing gown made flouncing a rather undignified business. He had to help her get extricated from his clothing, and then she found herself wrapped again in his embrace.
“Do you wish me to go, Hester?”
How she loved feeling the way his words rumbled up from his chest. She closed her eyes, the better to feel him speak. He’d put her on her back, while he was still on his side with her tucked along his length.
“Soon. You must.”
She felt his cheek against her temple, felt him hike her leg over his hip. “I’m not teasing, Hester. I have to leave within the week, and I intend to keep proposing to you until you agree to leave with me.”
“Hush.” She turned her face into his chest to prevent herself from saying something stupid. He wassincere. She heard it in his voice, felt it in his body. He was also a man bound by duty and honor to an excessive degree—witness his visit to a mere niece—and Hester was not about to take advantage of him.
She regarded him too highly for that.
“I am not ready to consider any proposals of marriage.”
It was the kindest thing she could think of to say. He’d offered out of decency, and she’d declined based on the same consideration.
* * *
Hester Daniels doted on her niece, but she positively melted in the presence of the small, drooling bundle that was her cousin Augusta’s firstborn.
Balfour caught Tye’s eye over the tea service. “We’ll leave them to it, shall we? They’ll be cooing and smiling at the wee lad the livelong day while grown men go hungry and cold for want for female attention.”
In truth, Tye would rather watch Hester talking nonsense to the baby in her arms. Her expression was one of such suppressed yearning, Tye could practically hear wedding bells—and naughty vocabulary whispered by firelight.
“A ramble to the burn?” Tye asked, rising. Balfour didn’t look like he had any agenda other than escaping the ladies’ presence, but Tye was learning not to underestimate the man.
“Sounds just the thing. Ladies, you will excuse us?”
His countess sent them along with a wave of her hand, while Hester, Fiona, and Lady Ariadne didn’t even look up from where they were fussing over the baby.
Balfour led the way through the back gardens. “I look at that wee lad, and all I can think is my brother had best hie himself back from Canada soon.”
“Your brother?”
“My oldest brother, by damn. We had a letter from him a year or so ago, though the man’s been officially declared dead. The letter wasn’t dated, you see, and my uncle was able to convince the courts it wasn’t proof my brother yet breathes.”
Tye had heard the gossip. The present earl was a younger son, styled as the earl with all the honors attendant thereto upon declaration of his brother’s death. Gossip was apparently not up to date.
“I didn’t know of this letter. I gather you would be pleased to see him?”
“Pleased? I’ll kiss the sodding bugger on both cheeks and dance the Fling. The verra last thing I want is for my own wee bairn to grow up mincing and bowing his life away as the Earl of Balfour.”
“And what is your uncle’s interest in the earldom?” Tye didn’t particularly care, but Balfour had opened the topic, and it was serving to pass the time.
“He holds the earldom’s trusts, and he’ll not turn loose of them until Asher is demanding he does so in the Queen’s own English with a court order clutched in each fist. The day can’t come soon enough for me.”
“You’d relinquish the title?”
Balfour stopped walking as they gained the path to the stream. “Are you looking forward to being the next marquess? To spending half your time in the stinking confines of London so you can participate in the farce known as the Upper House of Parliament? Will you drag your family the length of the kingdom several times a year to keep up appearances in Town while trying to stay ahead of the cholera and the typhus?”
He strode off in the direction of the burn. “Bloody lot of nonsense, the title. My dear wife brought me wealth, and I share it with the earldom as she directs, but I would much rather have my brother back than all the wealth and consequence in the world. Come along, man. I want to see the great guddler in action.”
Tye followed more slowly, realizing he, too, would rather have his brother back—flaws and all—than the title his father would someday leave to him.
Except that choice was not before him.
“Will you tell Fiona of her impending journey, Balfour?”
“Not today, and possibly not ever.” As he ambled along, Balfour snapped off a sprig of heather and brought it to his nose. “I’ve been in communication with the courts, Spathfoy. Fiona was born after your brother went to his reward. She’s a Scottish citizen. Your dear papa has not filed suit in any Scottish court to gain custody of her, which leaves her, I believe, in my custody, or possibly her mother and stepfather’s.”
“I see.”
Balfour had not been idle since Tye had last seen him. He’d put two rainy days to significant use.
“What do you see?”
“You are expecting a legal action regarding guardianship of Fiona. As far as I know, none has been instituted in the English courts either.”
They’d reached the stream, and Balfour was tugging at his boots. “As far as you know?” He paused, one boot in his hand, one on his foot. “Would your dear papa make you aware of such a thing?”
“I believe he would. Why are you removing your boots?”
“My niece was impressed with your ability to tickle a fish, Spathfoy. I can’t have her head turned by both you and the lad.”
Tye used the tree Fiona had climbed to brace himself while he pulled his own boots off. “My father hasn’t any need to institute a lawsuit, Balfour.”
“He hasn’t?” Balfour dropped his socks on top of his boots and stood with his fists on his hips. “He’s simply going to lift the child from under our noses and expect we’ll accommodate his thievery?”
Tye got his second boot off, and like Balfour, draped his socks over his boot tops. Wool socks…
“My father has sent me an affidavit that ought to be sufficient to guarantee safe conduct for me and my niece from here to Northumbria.”
Balfour’s expression didn’t change, and his tone became, if anything, softer. “Don’t be keeping me in suspense, laddie. What manner of affidavit?”
Tye regarded his socks of soft gray wool. “Quinworth has sworn in writing before witnesses of good character that he’s read Gordie’s will, and in that will, Gordie is very clear that any children are to be raised under the authority of their paternal family. Both the will and the affidavit are witnessed, sealed, and otherwise legally valid documents. I’m sorry, Balfour.”
Balfour swore colorfully and at length in Gaelic. “Write to your dear papa that I will be initiating suit in the Scottish courts to establish my custody of the girl.”
“Balfour, you can’t stop me from complying with my brother’s wishes.” Though Tye wished his brother’s damned will—and his father’s preferences—hadn’t put him in such a contretemps.
“Then enjoy Fee while you have her, Spathfoy, because I will not rest until she’s safely returned to our care.”
“I will do my utmost to see that Fiona’s best interests are served during her tenure with us in Northumbria. I am bending my every effort in that direction already.”
“For the love of God, I wish you’d go bend your damned efforts somewhere else. Now shut your pretty English mouth before you scare the last fish out of the burn.”
He stalked off toward the stream, not even turning when Tye spoke again.
“I’ve proposed marriage to Miss Daniels, Balfour. I think you’ll agree that Fiona’s adjustment to new circumstances will be made easier by her step-aunt’s presence under the same roof. If Fiona’s mother can entrust the child to Miss Daniels’s care in Scotland, then surely the lady’s supervision of the girl will be adequate in England.”
And both of them knew the courts would likely see it that way, too.
Balfour turned, his expression impossible to read. “And has Hester accepted your proposal?”
“She has not—yet.”
He nodded, muttered in Gaelic about the daft, horny English getting their deserts, and slipped into the frigid water so stealthily, Tye didn’t hear even a splash.
* * *
“He has proposed marriage, Augusta.” Hester made this confession quietly, because Fiona was nearby on a blanket with the baby. Aunt Ariadne had declined to accompany them onto the terrace, making noises about her complexion that Hester suspected were intended to hide fatigue.
Beside Hester on the bench, Augusta also spoke quietly. “Is the proposal sincere, Hester? I do not mean to imply you could not earn the notice of such a man, but—”
Hester held up a hand. “I know, Augusta. My experience with Jasper has not left me with the greatest confidence in my judgment. I thought I did not like Spathfoy, but the truth is, I did not know him. He is kind.”
