Dunstan’s life had been rearranged so completely these past weeks, he’d become accustomed to it, but he didn’t have to let the interfering witches think they had the upper hand. He wouldn’t question their belief that Malcolm babies must be delivered in Wystan, their ancestral home, but he could argue all else, with vigor. “We’ll leave when I have my land drained, and not an instant before,” he warned. “I promised Leila a garden, and she’ll have one.”
“Leila’s dowry will pay for that drainage,” Drogo reminded him, setting his book on the mantel. “You might give some consideration to her mother’s concerns.”
“It’s Dunstan’s land,” Leila defended him. “Between us, it is a joint endeavor. We will use the sale of his crop and turnip seeds to pay for my flowers, so I will be in his debt, not the other way around. I will trust his judgment on when we should leave for Wystan.”
“You are the one who twisted Staines’s arm and forced him to give me the tenant farm, as promised,” Dunstan reminded her, “or I wouldn’t have turnips to sell. Let us not refine too much upon who owes what to whom.”
Leila shot him a brilliant smile. “Staines was so grateful that he wouldn’t have to marry Lady Mary that he would have given us the entire estate as a wedding gift if he could have. Do you think you might train one of your brothers to manage his lands as well as you did? Bath is so far, I don’t think you can manage it and Ives, too.”
Dunstan would have laughed at the impossibility of any of his brothers dealing with the spoiled viscount, but he was still off balance from the reminder that Leila would bear his child in less than seven months’ time. “My brothers might explore our cave, could they find it, or dig for bones or explode holes in the hillside, so I think I’d best find another steward for your nephew. I owe him that much for deeding the grotto to you, even if his grandfather will not let him keep your gardens.”
“We’ll take what flowers we can to Wystan,” Leila replied serenely, tucking her hand into his. “Over the winter, we can use the conservatory there, and you can show me how to develop new varieties so we will be prepared when we return to Ives.”
Dunstan liked the sound of that, but a noise in the doorway distracted him. He smiled at the sight of his son standing there, the impossible Adonis at his side. The sudden look of uncertainty in Griffith’s eyes reminded him that in the flurry of wedding preparations, he hadn’t offered the boy the necessary reassurances. He still needed to hone his fathering skills.
“Lady Leila has a rather valuable stable that will need tending when she brings it to Ives,” Dunstan told the boy, ignoring the chaos of activity around them. “I thought you might help me with that this summer, and come with us to Wystan this fall, unless you prefer to attend Eton.”
Griffith’s eyes widened, but still hesitant of his place in these grand surroundings, he hung back. “You would take me with you?”
Leila tore her hand from Dunstan’s grip and strode across the room to reassure him. “I’ve talked with your mother. She agrees that it is time for you to be with your father now. He’ll need your company when we go north. I’ve been told Ives men don’t fare well with only women around.”
Griffith glanced dubiously over his shoulder to the parlor, where loud male laughter mixed with feminine giggles. “He has a lot of brothers . . .”
“Who have no appreciation for the land from which they sprang,” Adonis replied from the door. “They’ll not venture out in the dead of winter, far from the distractions of city life, in the interest of keeping family company.”
Dunstan would have disagreed, but Leila’s fascinated gaze on this man whom no one could name or place irked his more proprietary tendencies. Crossing the room to join her, he rubbed his hand over Griffith’s head. “Next year, Eton for you, boy, but this year is mine,” he whispered, before wrapping an arm around his bride’s slim waist. “A pox on you, Nameless,” he said to Adonis. “What do you know of family life?”
Adonis’s shaggy head swung slowly from Leila’s admiring gaze to confront Dunstan’s dangerous one. “I had a mother,” he retorted. “I did not spring from under a cabbage leaf.”
Dunstan dropped a kiss on Leila’s curls, released her, rolled his shoulders beneath the tight fit of the coat to loosen them, and raised his fists. “If you had a mother, then you have a name. What is it?” He might not have any grasp of the feminine niceties strewn about him, but he knew how to stake his territory. It began by identifying the stranger’s proper place in his universe.
Wide shoulders encased in a shabby blue coat, long legs in shiny new boots crossed in a relaxed stance as he leaned against the door, Adonis regarded his host’s fighting stance. “You’re planning to fight me for my name on your wedding day?”
“I figure I’m the largest one here and the most apt to win,” Dunstan agreed, ignoring Drogo’s polite cough.
Adonis turned back to Leila with a questioning lift of his dark brow. “You’re prepared to nurse him back to health after I pound him through the floor?”
Leila flashed her most flirtatious grin, the one guaranteed to drive Dunstan’s ire through the roof. “That’s Ninian’s talent. I’ll just watch, thank you.”
Dunstan laughed out loud in great, tumbling peals of joy. She’d just given him permission to do as he pleased, and encouraged him to do so with that smile. Gad, he loved the vixen.
First, though, he would have to settle this family matter, for there was no doubt in his mind that the ugly-beaked giant ornamenting the doorway had to be an Ives. No one else in all the kingdom could sport the dark looks and prominent proboscis better than his family.
“Leila understands character,” Dunstan said off-handedly, not expecting his guest to grasp the significance of that. He would have to ask her later what she’d seen in Adonis that had led her to believe they wouldn’t kill each other.
Adonis considered that a moment before saying, “Aodhagán.”
“Aid-ah-what?” Materializing beside Dunstan, Drogo attempted to repeat the word.
Dunstan simply stared in puzzlement, wondering if the man spoke in tongues.
“Aodhagán,” Adonis repeated. “That’s my name.”
“Gaelic,” Hermione murmured, straightening the golden cape around Dunstan’s shoulders. “Aid-ah-GAN, little fire. A very, very old name. I’m surprised your mother used it. We tend to use saints’ names these days, not the old names.”
Dunstan thought Adonis might strangle while processing this information from Leila’s bird-witted mother. “Malcolms tend to use saints’ names,” Dunstan clarified.
“Well, our branch does,” Hermione corrected, “but we are very forward-looking. That’s not to say he’s a Malcolm, dear,” she added in a flutter of alarm at Dunstan’s jerk of surprise at the suggestion that there were more branches on the Malcolm tree. “It is a very old name, after all. Anyone might use it.”
Leila patted her mother’s arm and steered her away from Dunstan, but her fascinated gaze remained on the man in the doorway. “I take it no one can pronounce your name, which is why you call yourself Adonis,” she concluded.
“Among other reasons,” the stranger answered with wary amusement.
“And would you care to enlighten us on the family name?” Dunstan persisted. He hadn’t wanted to like the man, but he understood his humor. The god Adonis was said to be very handsome, and this giant looked like an Ives. Ives males had many reputations, but handsomeness wasn’t the one that stood out.
Dunstan didn’t flinch beneath the dark, considering look the larger man gave him. He had no particular desire to create a brawl on his wedding day, but he wouldn’t avoid one either if the man insisted he wasn’t part of the family. With all these women fluttering about, brawling seemed a reasonable alternative.
“Dougal,” Adonis finally replied, in a curt, clipped tone.
“Dougal.” Stella repeated the name thoughtfully while straightening Leila’s veil. “Hermione, didn’t we have a great-aunt who married a Dougal?”
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“If you say so, dear. I believe the vicar just arrived. Shouldn’t we be taking our seats? I don’t know how much longer Felicity can keep the young ones behaving.”
All around him, women flitted and fluttered and clucked. Dunstan merely took shelter by drawing Leila to him. She was his already, vowed beneath the heavens. The ceremony ahead was merely a formality. He had responsibilities now, and he meant to assume them. Drogo had his business in Parliament and couldn’t be expected to handle every situation that their rowdy family engendered.
And the big man standing before him was part of the family, regardless of the name he gave them.
“Aidan.” Dunstan decided on the shorter name with satisfaction. “I’ll be damned if I call you Adonis any longer. Griffith is to stand up with me, but I’d appreciate it if you would take the row with my brothers—if it’s not an imposition,” he amended, feeling Leila’s tug on his sleeve.
Looking trapped, Aidan glanced from Dunstan’s determined expression to Drogo’s interested one, to the women, who did not appear to consider this request at all remarkable. His jaw muscle ticked, then set as he shrugged. “If you wish. But do not think you can hold me afterward.”
“Of course not,” Leila answered. “Though you’ll want to stay for some of Maman’s punch, I imagine. And Ninian has ordered the most delicious little tarts. I believe Griffith has learned some trick with a puzzle that he wished to show you, but I’m sure you can do that anytime.”
Hugging his magical wife, Dunstan kissed her ear. “Don’t tease, Leila. You may tame only one Ives at a time, and that one is me.” He gave his newfound friend a sympathetic glance. “Drogo has asked us to stay at Ives for the summer while I oversee the estate and drain my bog. You are welcome to join us when you can. The place is a monstrosity large enough to house two tribes.”
“I think I prefer your bog,” Aidan said dryly. “I’ll fix the thatch in return.”
“Would you?” Leila asked eagerly. “We’re planning on that becoming my distillery, but it will be some time before I have flowers to distill.”
Satisfied that he’d finally found a way to repay their odd relation for returning Griffith to him, Dunstan returned his attention to the matter at hand—surviving this public ceremony so he had the right to sweep Leila off to the house Drogo had given him at Ives, and the bed he now called his own.
“I think it is high time we suffer through the charade so we can go on to more important matters,” he whispered in Leila’s ear, planting a possessive palm over the place where his daughter grew. He was rather looking forward to the challenge of raising the only known Ives female.
“If you were not such a wonderful agronomist, I’d think you should take up the position of diplomat, my dear,” Leila taunted.
Howling with laughter at the insult, Dunstan dragged her toward their waiting audience.
He might never take to society’s ways, but he knew he could count on his wife to correct his faults and foibles. It just might take a lifetime to cure him.
He could live with that.
Must Be Magic Page 30
