“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 Earl of 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. “Why are 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.
“What on earth can you be about, my lord, to come barging in here, misrepresenting yourself to all and sundry, insinuating yourself into the child’s good graces when she’s all alone and without her parents? You broke bread with that girl before you revealed yourself to her. And you’ve yet to explain why Fee’s paternal family could turn their collective English backs on her for years, then show up here, without invitation, and trespass on the child’s peace. Do you know how much upheaval and change she’s gone through in the past year? Moving, acquiring a stepfather who loves her, losing the only home she’s known, and parting from the family in whose care she has thrived? And then you, you gallop onto the scene, as if you have some right to make inquiries regarding Fee’s care and well being…”
She ranted on quite impressively. Blue eyes were commonplace, and Tye had never been particularly partial to them—never noticed them, in fact, but these blue eyes were capable of sinking galleons, so effectively did they fire off indignation and protectiveness.
He was impressed, and he allowed the lady to rage on in part because he was impressed, but also because, as a member of Fiona’s extended maternal family, Miss Daniels was entitled to her tantrum.
“Perhaps madam might permit me an edgewise word of explanation.” He did not allow this to be a question.
She folded her arms over a bosom rendered impressive when heaving with ire, and turned her back on him—a telling shot. “Make it a good word, my lord. Fiona’s father was a disgrace, and his family’s behavior has only confirmed that his character ran true to his breeding.”
A splendid insult, but enough was quite enough.
“And how is any of this your concern, Miss Daniels? As I understand it, you are the younger sister of Fiona’s newly acquired stepfather. You are no relation to the child at all.”
She turned to face him, somehow glaring down a rather determined nose, though she was a foot shorter than Tye. “I am her physical custodian at present, my lord, and I love her.”
Clearly, this irrelevance was a decisive argument to the woman, and
just as clearly, Tye was going to have to reassess the situation. A serving of contrition leavened with charm was called for—on his part.
“You are quite right to be indignant on Fiona’s behalf, though I had expected to have this discussion with Altsax, or possibly with Altsax and Balfour. Shall we stroll a while, or would you prefer to sit?”
She blinked at the choice. “It matters naught to me.”
He offered her his arm, a strategic bit of manners. She took it gingerly and let him lead her down a path among the roses. “Fiona’s mother does take her gardens seriously, doesn’t she?”
“Her name is Mary Frances.”
He let a silence form, one intended to ease hostilities and allow him to size up his immediate opponent—because they were opponents. He’d take on all the indignant aunts and doting—if absentee—stepfathers in Scotland, if necessary, to accomplish his ends.
“And is Mary Frances happy with your brother?”
Something shifted in the woman’s demeanor. “They are besotted.” Her admission was grudging and maybe wistful too.
“I concluded as much, owing to the brevity of their engagement. When a man has a title, though, these things become a priority.”
She dropped his arm. “These things? These things, such as marrying the love of one’s life, speaking vows with the person who can help one to face life’s hurts and wrongs with courage, the person in whose love and trust one can repose one’s entire heart?”
She spoke in flights and poems, and made no sense to him.
“I was referring to the need to secure the succession, to populate one’s nursery. Procreation of legitimate offspring, that sort of thing.”
She visually walloped him, smacked him hard, a good, cracking blow that no doubt would have left his cheek smarting mightily had she used her hand instead of those blue eyes, that nose, and a posture reminiscent of an outraged angel. “Fiona is legitimate, no thanks to your dashing scoundrel of a brother.”
He did not touch his cheek, though it was tempting. “I did not mean to imply otherwise.”
“Yes, you did. Dripping gentlemanlike condescension, using sly innuendo and subtle hints, you insulted my niece and her mother. If I were a man, I’d call you out.”
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