Though it was irksome in the extreme to think she’d have to withstand Spathfoy’s good behavior all on her own for the duration of an entire meal. Aunt had decided to take a tray with Fiona, which was probably as well, given the child’s difficult day.
“I am sorry Lady Ariadne will not be joining us for dinner.” Spathfoy offered his arm with all the courtly élan imbued by his breeding. “She gave me to understand she’s something of a family historian, and I would love to hear the tales she has stored in her head.”
“She’s a treasure.” Also a terror. “But her stories are not such as would flatter English ears.”
He seated her at the table without replying, and he had the knack of even that.
A lady needed assistance taking her seat because she had to manage her skirts and petticoats, which involved two hands, generally, and that left the gentleman to manage the chair. Her brother Matthew was no good at it at all, usually catching hems under chair legs, or bumping the chair right into the backs of her knees.
Matthew was her brother. Spathfoy was… a pest. An elegant pest who’d bathed and changed for the evening meal, though even in informal attire, he exuded a kind of inborn grace that was not having a good effect on Hester’s disposition.
“You might be interested to know I am half English, Miss Daniels.”
He’d murmured that soft aside right near her ear as she’d fluffed out her skirts, and in addition to the impact of his silken voice twining through her awareness, she caught a whiff of his scent.
It was all she could do not to bat him away. He smelled of lavender and something lovely—attar of roses? Honeysuckle? She was still trying to dissect the incongruous sweetness in his fragrance when he took the chair to her right.
“Your mother is Scottish, my lord?”
“A Lowlander, but yes. I get my height from her side of the family. May I serve you?”
They were dining informally, with the food kept hot on the table in chafing dishes. This was how the household always dined, but Hester felt a pang not to have Fee chattering away on one side, and Aunt chirping along on the other. They were her family now, and she had quickly grown to love them.
His lordship was regarding her curiously, and Hester realized she’d let the conversation lapse.
“If you would do the honors, my lord. I am very partial to my vegetables. Have your things arrived from the inn at Ballater?”
“They did. I must say I was impressed with the quality of the accommodations. I take it Her Majesty’s interest in the surrounds has done good things for the local economy.”
He passed her a plate full of steaming food, but the portions were such as a large man might consume after a busy day in the fields—an interesting miscalculation from somebody Hester took to be very calculating indeed.
“If I eat this much, my lord, I’ll not be able to rise at the end of the meal.” She set the plate down in front of him and started serving herself. “And as for the local economy, the royal family is here but a few months a year, and that only in recent years. Deeside owes more to the fish than we do to the Crown.”
“Fish?” He watched her serve herself and frowned at the portions she put on her plate. “Miss Daniels, you cannot thrive on such meager fare.”
“There’s trifle for dessert, my lord. Will you say the blessing?” An inspiration, to stick him with something as mundane as blessing the meal.
Her cleverness backfired. He was sitting where Fee usually sat, and out of habit, Hester reached out her hand when it was time to say the blessing. When her fingers closed around Spathfoy’s, she was too dumbstruck at her blunder to withdraw her hand.
Two
“I’d be happy to say the blessing.”
While Spathfoy sat there holding Hester’s bare hand in his, his gaze moved around the table, over the covered dishes, to the huge bouquet of roses starting to wilt on the sideboard, and to the window, where the long hours of gloaming were casting soft shadows. “For journeys safely concluded, for good food, for the company of family and friends, we are grateful. Amen.”
He kept his hand around hers for an instant more, long enough for Hester to register several impressions: his grip was dry, warm, firm, and unhesitating. He wasn’t cursed with bodily shyness, for all his other faults.
And it felt good—far, far too good—to join hands again with an adult male, to feel the latent strength in the clasp of his hand, to revel in simple human contact.
Hester reached for her water goblet at the same time Spathfoy reached for his wine, and their hands brushed again.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Daniels. You were saying something about fish?” He took a sip of his wine, not by word or gesture suggesting a little collision of hands might unnerve him the way it unnerved her.
“The River Dee is among the finest salmon streams in the world, my lord. Throughout Deeside, there are excellent inns and hostelries to accommodate the fishermen who come here for sport. His Highness is a great sportsman, and that doesn’t hurt either.”
“But the royal family is not now in residence at Balmoral, are they?” He ate almost daintily, and yet the food was disappearing from his plate at a great rate.
“Her Majesty usually removes here closer to August. We get quite the influx of English then, all mad for a walk in the Highlands in hopes they’ll encounter the royal family on a ramble.”
“You say this with some aspersion.”
His lovely voice held not so much censure as curiosity. Hester collected her thoughts while she took a sip of her wine, though the truth came out anyway.
“I came to Scotland to be with family, my lord. To escape the social confines of London, and the expectations incumbent on the daughter of a titled man when she emerges from mourning that man’s death. I do not relish the idea of coming across in the woods the very people I sought to avoid when I quit London.”
He was regarding her closely, his expression hard to read, and then he did the most unexpected thing: he patted her hand. A gentle, glancing stroke of his fingers over her knuckles.
The gesture should have felt condescending, but instead it was… comforting.
“Society is the very devil.” He topped off her wine. “As the heir to a marquess, I can only sympathize with your disparagement of it. And my condolences on the loss of your father. I’m hoping my own lives to a biblical age.”
He sounded very sincere in this wish, very human. Hester tried not to be disconcerted by that.
She’d thought dinner would be a struggle, but by the time he was asking her to finish his serving of trifle, she realized more than an hour in Spathfoy’s company had been… enjoyable.
“We’ve almost lost the light, Miss Daniels, but is there time for a short turn in the garden? A stroll before retiring settles the meal and is a personal habit of mine. If nothing else, I can look in on Flying Rowan.”
She could not politely refuse, and it wasn’t pitch dark yet. He assisted her to her feet, taking her hand then tucking it over his arm. He touched her with a certain competence, a male assurance that suggested handling women came instinctively to him.
She could not quite resent him for this—being handled competently was too rare a treat—but Hester vowed she would not be swayed by his abilities in this regard. He was an invading army of one, and his company manners did not make his mission any less suspect.
“The roses are particularly lovely,” she said as they moved across the terrace. “Mary Fran spares no effort in their care.”
“My grandmother was quite the gardener. My Scottish grandmother, that is.”
“And you must have seen her gardens at some point?”
He walked along beside her, making a gentlemanly accommodation to her shorter stride, and yet she felt him hesitate at the question.
“I did. For a succession of boyhood summers, I was sent to my grandparents while my parents attended various house parties in the South.”
He said nothing more, revealed no memories of those long-ago su
mmers, so Hester was casting about for a polite topic they hadn’t yet exhausted, when an odd, ugly sound split the evening gloom. Beside her, Spathfoy paused.
Hester shuddered, wanting to put her hands over her ears. “What is that? It sound like a child in distress, a very young child.”
“It’s a fox, and I’ve been told that sound is Reynard’s attempt to attract a mate.”
“Pity the poor vixen, then, if that’s his best effort at courtship.” Hester wanted to move, to get away from that unpleasant, raucous noise, though it didn’t seem to bother her escort.
“The female’s lot is often unenviable, or so my sisters would have me believe. Which is your favorite rose?”
They made a circuit of the entire garden, until Hester’s head was beginning to ache with the unaccustomed amount of wine she’d consumed and the burden of being sociable to a man she did not like or trust. He left the impression that being cordially pleasant was no effort for him, so thoroughly ingrained were his gentlemanly inclinations.
“It is nearly dark,” Hester said. “Shall you visit your horse?”
“Let’s sit for a moment. It has been some time since I paused to appreciate the fragrance of roses on the evening air.”
Mother of God, he sounded wistful, and there was nothing for it but she must sit with him. Hester appropriated a wooden bench between the Bourbons and the Damasks, hearing the seat creak when Spathfoy came down beside her.
“I see a lamp burning in the opposite wing from my bedroom, though I doubt you have servants biding on the ground floor.”
“Aunt Ree’s rooms are on the ground floor to spare her the stairs and put her closer to the kitchens if she’s in need of a posset at bedtime.”
As they watched, Lady Ariadne herself bobbed past a window, her purple turban no longer in evidence.
“My grandmother had the same snow-white hair,” Spathfoy said. “What do you suppose she’s reading?”
Hester sensed that this too was part of his nature, a curiosity about anything and everything around him, because a man likely to inherit a marquessate would not comprehend that people with small lives treasured at least the privacy of those small lives.
“She reads old love letters before retiring and hopes her former swains will visit her in her dreams.”
Ariadne’s habit sounded daft, put into words like that. Daft and lonely.
And he had nothing to say to this, so a silence fell while Hester felt fatigue of both body and spirit seeping into her bones.
Spathfoy stretched out long, long legs and crossed them at the ankles. “At least she has love letters. Are you growing chilled, Miss Daniels? I can offer my coat, or return you to the house.”
Hester rose. The idea of being enveloped in the warmth and fragrance of his clothing was more disturbing than any slight chill in the evening air. “No thank you, my lord. I’ll see myself in, and my thanks, too, for your company at dinner. Breakfast is on the sideboard in the same dining parlor no later than first light.”
He got to his feet. “My thanks as well, Miss Daniels. Pleasant dreams.”
She might have tarried, might have reminded him to ring for anything he needed, and added admonitions that Highland hospitality meant their home was his for the duration of his stay, but she left him among the roses and shadows. Reminding Lady Ariadne to close her curtains was a far more urgent and worthy mission.
* * *
Tye hadn’t lied. A stroll after dinner was one of his personal habits. He’d acquired this habit in defense of his peace of mind when the alternative had been port and cigars with his father—a domestic ritual that invariably degenerated into vituperation of the Commons, the Prince Consort, his lordship’s own marchioness, or the fairer sex at large.
And seeing Flying Rowan properly bedded down was also part of Tye’s routine, though it served nicely to allow for discreet reconnaissance of Matthew Daniels’s outbuildings and grounds as well.
If the stables and gardens were any indication, Daniels was no slacker.
“Unlike you.”
Rowan flicked an elegant black ear as his owner approached. The horse stood in a loose box bedded in ample, fragrant oat straw. A full bucket of clean water hung on the wall, and the gelding’s coat showed signs of a thorough grooming after his exertions earlier in the day.
“Don’t get too comfortable here, horse. The poor of the parish—of which there are more than a few—could use a hearty stew.”
Rowan wuffled and turned large, luminous eyes on Tye.
“Shameless beggar.” Tye let himself into the stall and produced a lump of sugar from his coat pocket. “Does it trouble you, horse, that you have no love letters to read by your bedside of a night?”
Rowan dispatched the lump of sugar and used a big roman nose to gently nudge at Tye’s pocket.
“You have no love letters, do you? Neither do I, thank The Almighty. Don’t beg.” He tapped the horse’s nose. “It’s ungentlemanly.” Tye scratched the beast’s withers, also part of his end-of-day ritual with the horse. “Quinworth reads old letters. One almost pities him when one finds him in such a state. Swilling whisky and chasing it with sentiment.”
The horse groaned and shivered all over. When Tye dropped his hand, the gelding craned its neck to pin Tye with another pointed look.
“You have no dignity, horse.” Tye moved around and started scratching from the horse’s other side. “And Quinworth has too much. The old boy has me neatly boxed in, make no mistake. If I don’t retrieve my darling niece, there will be hell to pay.”
And for just a moment, Tye let himself wonder if the ends truly justified the means. A childhood served out on Quinworth’s terms was not exactly a guarantee of happiness—far from it.
He slung an arm over the horse’s withers and leaned in, resting his weight against the animal for a moment. Fiona would be better off being acknowledged by her paternal family, and she would want for nothing money could buy.
And that should be an end to it.
“We’ll be heading back south before too much longer. Enjoy your Scottish holiday while you can.”
Tye let himself out of the stall, made certain the door was securely latched, took a tour of the rest of the stalls to inspect for the same measure, and ambled out into the starry night.
A light was burning on the first floor in the wing opposite Miss Ariadne’s, and the rest of the house, for the most part, was dark. The light wasn’t in Tye’s room—he’d been graced with a corner chamber of stately proportions—which meant it was possibly Miss Daniels burning late-night oil.
Did she, too, read love letters in hopes of inspiring amorous dreams?
He thought not. She didn’t strike him as a woman who’d received many love letters, much less as a lady who’d treasure the ones she’d been sent.
* * *
“Serviette on your lap, Fee.” Hester passed the child two sections of an orange. “And you’ll not be haring off this morning. If you need to stretch your legs, we’ll take a walk down to the burn.”
“May we picnic?”
Aunt Ariadne turned the handle of the teapot so it faced Hester. “It’s a lovely day for a ramble, my dears. I’m sure his lordship would appreciate a chance to see some of our views, too.”
Hester did not wrinkle her nose at this suggestion, because Fee was watching her too closely, even as the child also made short work of the orange sections.
“Perhaps his lordship would like to rest up from his journey,” Hester suggested. “Write some letters assuring his loved ones of his safe arrival.”
And perhaps his lordship didn’t intend to stay long enough to make even that exercise worth his time. The inn had sent out one small trunk and a traveling bag, which Hester took as encouraging.
A man traveling that light usually did not intend to tarry.
Aunt Ariadne watched as Hester filled their teacups. “Did you sleep well, my dear?”
“Oh, of course.”
Except she hadn’t. Hester had
heard his lordship in the chamber next to hers, heard the sound of his wardrobe closing, heard him stirring on the balcony next to hers, heard him opening and closing the drawers to the escritoire in his room.
He wasn’t particularly loud, but he was there, where nobody ought to be, and this offended Hester’s equilibrium to the point where she suspected the dratted man had made an appearance in her dreams.
“Good morning, Lady Ariadne.” As if conjured from Hester’s thoughts, Spathfoy paused in the doorway to the dining parlor. “Miss Daniels, Miss Fiona. A lovely morning made lovelier still by present company.”
He advanced into the room, and Hester gave him a look informing him that she wasn’t charmed by his expansive good will. Last night, over a few too many glasses of wine, she’d exerted herself to tolerate his company out of simple good manners, but in the broad light of day, he needed to know she was not about to let down her guard again.
“Good morning, Uncle.” Fee beamed up at him over sticky fingers and a sticky chin. “Do you want to share my orange?”
“I’ll pass, thank you.” He moved along the sideboard, piling eggs, bacon, ham, and toast on his plate. “But a spot of tea wouldn’t go amiss. I must say, it has been quite some time since I’ve enjoyed my matutinal repast in such jejune company.”
He took a seat at Ariadne’s elbow while Hester wiped off Fee’s chin.
Fee spoke around Hester’s dampened serviette. “Your tootinal what?”
“His morning meal,” Hester translated. “In the company of one so young.”
“Is that English?”
Hester almost replied that such a lofty expression was very definitely English, but Aunt intervened.
“Maybe his lordship was offering me a compliment on my youthful good looks, for which I would have to thank him. You must accompany the ladies on their rambles this morning, Spathfoy. They’re planning a picnic by the burn, which is a lovely spot. After traveling all day yesterday, you might want to work out a few of the kinks. Sitting on a train can be such an ordeal.”
“I didn’t, actually.” He paused before he took up his knife and fork, which left Hester a moment to stare at his hands. She’d held one of those hands, if only briefly. “I do not enjoy train travel, though it serves well for long distances. I rode out from Aberdeen over the course of the past two days.”
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