A Question for the Ages (Questions for a Highlander Book 7)

by Angeline Fortin

  “Shall we adjourn to the dining room?”

  Aye, much better to have fantasies of dining tables instead of desks.

  * * *

  “I’ll not continue to argue whose philosophy is more profound, yours or his. I will concede, on my part, that Thoreau’s two years, two months, and two days in the Walden Woods were better spent than my two years”—Piper paused in mental calculation—“nine months, and nineteen days here.”

  Laughter, free and easy, bubbled up in Connor. As it had frequently over the past few hours. All of them well spent. He’d never taken a meal he was so reluctant to come to an end. One hunger exchanged for another, the first suppressed—for the evening, at least—and the other satisfied by a tasty meal followed by Piper’s delicious tarts. The tantalizing taste offered some recompense for the other desserts he’d denied himself.

  As he well should, he reminded himself.

  They’d talked, long after the food was gone and only crumbs remained of the tarts. He’d discovered that her assertion about being a better stable boy than milkmaid hadn’t been entirely in jest. She’d tried her hand at both as a child. Her interest in horses gained her some education in all aspects of equine care. Topics of conversation from there had ranged from breeding and racing horses to literature, agriculture, and science. Having lived years in relative seclusion, Piper was remarkably well-read, making up for what she lacked in practical application with a nimble mind and even quicker tongue.

  Connor thought he hadn’t laughed so much in some time. Or enjoyed a person’s company so well. He wasn’t eager for the evening to end. And end it must at this very table. There wasn’t a spirited debate over the poetry of Longfellow versus Tennyson, a conversation arguing the significance of the Victor Chandler Chase at Ascot when compared to Cheltenham’s Gold Cup in the world of horse racing, or an expressive deliberation of the pantheistic philosophies of Thoreau that would keep his thoughts where they ought to be if he were left alone with her again.

  Not that he was eager to part company.

  “More wine?”

  Piper nodded, and lifting the decanter, he refilled her glass and his own. As he was about to set it aside, a tap at the door announced the arrival of one of the footmen. “I beg yer pardon, m’lord. M’…ma’am.”

  “He’s not a lord, Archie.” Piper’s voice was tinged with amusement, as they’d touched on that sensitive subject earlier.

  “Yes, m’…ma’am.” He nodded and directed his attention to Connor. “M’lor—er, sir, Hilde was wondering if there will be anything else?”

  Connor’s gaze shifted to her. “Anything else?”

  “No, thank you.”

  He repeated her answer to the footman with a hint of sarcasm.

  “Very good, m’lord.” The footman bowed, proper address forgotten or ignored. Connor claimed to be uncertain which it was. “That being the case, Hilde requested that I likewise remind you of the hour.”

  “Did she now?” Connor pulled out his pocket watch to check the time. “Ye’ve reminded me, Archie. Ye may leave us.”

  After Archie bowed and departed, Connor slipped his watch back into his vest pocket. “I was about to admonish him for cutting the evening short, however, ‘tis nigh unto midnight already.”

  “That late?” Piper smiled, eyes heavy with fatigue…or at least, that was what Connor chose to think for the sake of his own sanity. No dessert would be more satisfying than another taste of her lips.

  “Appears so.

  Rising from his chair, Connor moved to hers, holding it while she stood. Her hand in his was hot as a brand. Logic insisted he release it before temptation overtook him, yet instinct held on. He caressed her soft skin with his thumb.

  “Will you kiss me goodnight?”

  His head began to shake of its own accord before she even finished the question. “I dinnae think that would be the wisest course of action. It’s late and ye appear weary. Shall I call up Albert to see ye home?”

  A low sigh escaped her. “No need. I’ll have Hilde ring from the kitchen.”

  As if to imply, if Connor weren’t going to see to the task himself, she could find her own way.

  He didn’t dare, yet felt like an arse for denying her.

  “At least allow me call Archie back.”

  “No, that’s quite all right,” she assured him. “I know the way.”

  Her words renewed the curiosity that had nagged him for days now. She knew the way. She’d known the footman’s name. Then again, she seemed more than familiar with the staff here. Because she’d been raised in the area as she’d told him before? Because she lived close by? How close?

  Hours of talk and he hadn’t learned the answers to the questions that concerned him most. In defense of them both, their lively repartee hadn’t left much of a gap to fill.

  And there was time for that.

  “I shan’t sleep a wink until I ken yer safely home.”

  Until he could lie abed picturing her in hers.

  “Oh, off with you,” she teased. “I’m certain you have a treatise on the proper consistency of mud in the pig pen to lull you to sleep quick enough.”

  With a low chuckle, he turned her hand and kissed it. “Ye ken me well already.”

  “Good night, Connor.”

  “Good night, lass.”

  Chapter 11

  The duke’s threats have become most vile. What he said to me today I cannot bear repeating, even upon this page. I was right to be afraid of him and cannot predict what he will do next.

  ~ from the diary of Piper Brudenall, January 1893

  “Keeping company with the new marchioness’s brother, child?” Hilde clucked her tongue like a mother hen the moment Piper set foot into the kitchen. The cook sat in a rocking chair near the fireplace with her stockinged feet propped before the flames and a tea cup in her hands despite the late hour.

  Midnight.

  Connor’s company had been so diverting, what she thought nothing more than a few hours protracted to more than six without either of them taking notice.

  When the calloused pad of his thumb stroked the back of her hand in slow circles and that warm, sexy swirl returned to his eyes, for a split second, she’d thought he might be inclined to resume their passionate entanglement on his desk right there upon the table.

  Instead he’d allowed her to walk away. His eyes followed her as she made her way down the servants’ hall under the soft light of the gas sconces along the wall.

  She’d taken each step with mounting reluctance but was happy to find Hilde waiting up for her. She hugged the older woman around her shoulders and dropped a kiss on her cheek. “You’re up late. Do you have any more of that brandy?”

  “Tea, my dear. Tea.”

  “Very well, where is the tea?”

  Hilde retrieved a bottle from the floor next to her. Finding a cup for herself, Piper pulled up a woven-topped footstool and joined her. She held out her cup and Hilde filled it generously.

  “In need of a drink, are you?” the cook asked.

  In many ways, Piper thought. It had been a day of wildly divergent emotions. Anxiety, devastating passion, amusement, intrigue, and a growing respect for Connor. In the end, what she’d been left with was sadness.

  Sadness that this was going to come to an end all too soon. She wasn’t prepared to give any of it up. Including him.

  Unless he were to accompany her, as he’d said.

  A bright spot in her future. Unfortunately, it, like everything else, would fade in time.

  “I overheard some of your conversation. It was a joy to see you as engaged and vivacious as you used to be,” Hilde remarked after a moment. “I’m surprised that you’d take such a chance.”

  “I trust him. Do you think that’s foolish of me?”

  “He’s proven himself a kind man. A gentleman. The crofters have nothing but good things to say about him.” The older woman paused, looking away from the dancing flames to glance at Piper. “Have you told him eve
rything then?”

  Their evening had been filled with such entertaining conversation, she hadn’t found an appropriate moment to tell him the whole truth. Even when her familiarity with the manor and its people filled his eyes with questions, she hadn’t been able to confess it all. It was too late in the evening to launch into that talk.

  “Not yet. I will, though. I want to,” Piper added quietly, staring down into the amber swirls of her cup as if it would hold some assurance of the days ahead. “He thinks I should leave here. For good.”

  Hilde said nothing, nudging her chair into motion with one toe as she sipped her brandy.

  Piper also took a swallow of hers, enjoying the slow burn down her throat. It had a way of calming one’s nerves and tumultuous thoughts. “What do you think?”

  “You know what I think, child.”

  Yes. Hilde thought she should reveal herself and renew her faith in her brother. Moreover, she thought Piper should feel guilty for not telling Harry where she was. Or rather share the guilt Hilde herself harbored for not doing the same. Should she, though? After all, she had begged her brother to come and he never had. To her mind, the guilt should be his.

  Not hers.

  Though she’d rejected the idea when she first learned of her brother’s return, it blossomed into a more and more alluring possibility. One which grew more feasible with each day creeping closer to his return. Maybe she should give him a chance. Hear him out before making a decision.

  Connor encouraged her to leave. An uninformed opinion as he didn’t know the whole truth as yet about who she or her undependable guardian were. If he knew—once he knew—would his opinion change? She’d like to find out. She would find a way to tell him the truth.

  “I should hate to lose moments like these, you know?” Hilde said after a long stretch of silence.

  Piper didn’t pretend to misunderstand. Sliding off her stool, she sat at Hilde’s feet and laid her head in the older woman’s lap. “Me, too. You’ve been the mother I never had, Hilde.” It needed to be said before she didn’t have another chance.

  A trembling hand smoothed over her hair, and the cook inhaled a shaky breath that had tears stinging at Piper’s eyes. “And you have always been my precious child.”

  A hot tear splashed on her cheek. Losing all she had when she thought she had nothing left at all would break her heart.

  “I only want good things for you,” Hilde whispered with a sniff. “Mr. MacKintosh might be one of them.”

  Piper liked to think so, too. Regrettably, she had learned good things didn’t last forever.

  “You should get to bed. It’s late.”

  With a nod, Piper swiped at her eyes before she climbed to her feet and held out at hand to the older woman. “As should you. Mr. MacKintosh will be wanting his breakfast bright and early, I’d wager.”

  “Up with the sun, that one,” Hilde agreed, and let Piper help her out of the chair with a mumbled complaint about old bones. “Let me ring for Albert.”

  “No, don’t bother him. I’ll stay here tonight.”

  The cook’s brows rose, though she made no comment. Banking the fire, Hilde departed for the room that had been set aside for her near Mrs. Davies’s in the service hall. The three flights of stairs to the servants’ quarters above were too great an obstacle for her to surmount on a regular basis these days.

  With an oil lamp in hand, Piper eschewed the servants’ stairs in favor of a concealed staircase hidden behind a faux panel at the far end of the service hall near the courtyard entrance. The stairs had been built by the fourth marquis to hide his affair with his housekeeper and climbed a single story to his bedchamber on the first floor. Piper had used them when she was in hiding here, making it her habit to avoid any use of the main staircases to best maintain the secrecy of her presence.

  Her bedchamber was a short distance down the hall from the lord’s chamber, far from Connor’s in the bachelor’s quarters in the opposite wing. As with her mother, he would never know they slept under the same roof. Slipping into the room, she closed and locked the door behind her.

  The room was clean and aired, much to her surprise. She hadn’t slept here in a year. There was no reason it shouldn’t be shrouded in dust cloth. Had Mrs. Davies kept it at the ready for her? Piper wouldn’t have thought the housekeeper so sentimental.

  Decorated in shades of green and cream, the bedchamber was soft and homey. Bed hangings of sage and cream toile with scenes of lords and ladies from centuries past dancing hung from the four tall walnut posts of the bed. A canopy of the same arched above it with showers of green fringe dripping from the edges. Solid green silk coverings draped the bed and cream, watered taffeta covered the walls.

  With her mother off in London most of the time, Mrs. Davies had helped Piper decorate the room with her favorite color. Once the green had represented the outdoors, her favorite place and playground. Now it summoned images of Connor.

  As most things did of late.

  With a soft smile, Piper ran her fingers down the fringed edge of the matching toile curtains, letting the silken strands sift through her fingers. Fringe or lace dripped from the edges of almost everything in the room. A walnut vanity sat along one wall. Brushes and combs on top. The towering wardrobe next to it would be bursting with clothes, if she were to inspect the contents. She’d taken nothing from the room with her when she’d moved to her cottage except a few simple pieces of clothing. The illusion had needed to be maintained, in case anyone examined the room, that she had never returned to Dinton Grange.

  Several oil landscapes in soft pastels hung on the walls. Piper didn’t heed them now but instead peered at the handful of photographs in heavy pewter frames atop of the chest of drawers at the foot of the bed. Leaving them behind had been difficult. There was one of her father, another of them together when she was a little girl. The rest were of her and Harry, a painful reminder of the closeness they’d once shared.

  Turning her back on them, she climbed on top of the bed and hugged a downy pillow to her heart. When she lay nestled in the cozy bed, she stared up at the canopy with a frown.

  She’d hardly left the nursery behind before her father died. When Celeste had remarried before another year passed, they’d continued to spend the summers here. Sedmouth would join them at her mother’s insistence that the Grange was bigger than his estate. That had gone on for a few years until Harry had had enough of Celeste’s machinations and banned her from the property. After that, it was either the townhouse in Victoria Square for her or rare visits to her stepfather’s estate in Basingstoke.

  This room had never gotten much use. It had been decorated for a young girl with a head full of dreams and a heart full of hope. There was an innocence and frivolity in the delicate lace and shining satins that she didn’t possess any longer. Lovely as it was, it was a child’s room and she was no longer a child.

  She continued to act like one from time to time, she acknowledged. Didn’t everyone from time to time? Her temper had a short fuse. Occasionally, she fell into a juvenile pout when she didn’t get her way.

  Her head was still full of dreams even if there was meager hope left in her heart.

  Was it immature of her to continue to hold a grudge against her brother? Was she wrong to cling to her distrust, doling out faith in small doses like a petulant toddler being forced to share her sweets? She didn’t think so.

  She didn’t like to think so.

  She’d vehemently adhered to her belief that he’d betrayed her over the years. Maintained it for reasons that no longer signified in the greater scheme of things. Now in the space of weeks, that resolve was crumbling.

  Because of Connor. Because of tonight, really.

  While her feelings for him were far from sisterly, he recalled to mind many of her favorite parts of Harry. Their animated conversation—granted, far more mature than any she’d shared with her brother—had brought to mind a multitude of similar moments with Harry. The teasing, poking fun at one anoth
er, the test of her mental acuity to keep him on his toes.

  That aura of camaraderie had suffused her with each hour’s passing. As much as it stirred remorse for the past, it also renewed a fraction of the anticipation she’d once known for the future. She didn’t want to give that up.

  She didn’t want to give Connor up.

  How could she spend so long aspiring for nothing greater than a safe and pleasant tomorrow and suddenly be overcome by the lofty ambition to have everything she longed for?

  If fate were to fail her anew, at the very least she wanted a taste of what life might have been like if hers had gone differently.

  Chapter 12

  I tried to tell Mother what Rutledge has said to me. What he’s tried to do. She will hear nothing against him and has redoubled her campaign to force this marriage.

  ~ from the correspondence of Piper Brudenall, January 1893

  “I need to have a word wi’ the lady, nae more. I simply need ye to tell me how to contact her.” Connor kept his voice low and soft, hoping to finally coax an answer from someone with kindness. “Dinnae act as if ye dinnae ken how to do that. I ken ye’re all part of the ruse.”

  Bram’s face flooded with enough color to make his many freckles disappear. Feet shuffling, ears afire. With his wordless gaping, he’d proven himself the worst liar in history. Shame Connor hadn’t pressed the groom harder in his initial questioning. He might have saved himself months of fruitless searching.

  And another hour given to the effort this very day.

  Bloody hell, he didn’t want to accost the lass! He would have liked to think after months here, they’d all ascertained that much of his character.

  “R-ruse, m’lord?” the lad stammered. “I’m not certain what you mean.”

  “Aye, ye do.” Connor draped an arm around the groom and rotated him toward the path to the dairy. The same one he’d watched Piper ride up before. He pointed in that direction with a confidential clap to the lad’s shoulder. “Mrs. Milbourne. I ken ye keep an eye out for her. I aim to do the same.”