Fee sat up. “You rode Flying Rowan clear out from Aberdeen? That is miles and miles. Surely, your fundament—”
Hester put her hand over the girl’s mouth. “Fiona MacGregor, you know better than to mention such a thing before a gentleman.” Though sixty-some miles was quite a long way to ride when the train was readily available.
Aunt placidly sipped her tea. “One can wonder about such things, Fiona, my dear, but one doesn’t ask at table, and not of a gentleman guest. Some jam, my lord?”
He was not afraid of good, hearty fare. In fact, he ate with the casual gusto of a man who had never known hunger or want, a man whose family hadn’t weathered potato famines, clearances, or decades of outlaw status forbidding them use of their very name.
“You’re quiet this morning, Miss Daniels. Did you sleep well?” He paused long enough to put down his utensils and take a sip of his tea while he considered Hester from across the table.
“I’m a sound sleeper, my lord. Thank you.”
Fee seized on the minute silence following Hester’s comment. “Will you picnic with us, Uncle? We could bring Flying Rowan if he needs to work out the kinks too.”
“Rowan will work out his kinks ambling around a grassy paddock, but I will tell him you extended a cordial invitation. Perhaps tomorrow we might take him for a short hack.”
“Does that mean I can go with you?” Fee fairly bounced in her seat with anticipation. “Can we leap the walls again and go really, really fast?”
Spathfoy set down his teacup. “I am guessing permission for such an outing will depend on your excellent deportment in the intervening hours, Fiona, and of course upon the Scottish weather.”
He tossed a glance at Hester, as if making some clever implication about the weather, or Hester herself.
“He means you have to behave, Fee,” Hester said.
“I’ll behave. Aunt Ree, may I please be excused? I want to tell Rowan we might go on another adventure.”
“You may be excused, but Fiona?” Aunt’s countenance remained serene. “You are not to go into that horse’s stall, my girl. You can visit with him perfectly well from outside his door.”
“Yes, Aunt.”
Fiona scrambled off her chair, remembered to bob something resembling a curtsy at the door, and departed in a patter of small feet.
“She is a wonderfully lively child,” Spathfoy remarked. “And it appears her injury is healed overnight. More tea, Miss Daniels?”
He managed to imply that lively was a distasteful quality in a child—in anybody. “No thank you, my lord. I was wondering if you’d like us to post some letters for you. Surely your family will want to know you’re safely arrived?”
“And here I thought I was among family, at least in the general sense.”
Well, good. Sniping was far preferable to charm.
Aunt beamed him an angelic smile. “Of course you’re among family, dear boy. You must prevail upon Balfour to take you shooting while you’re with us, and fishing, though Hester is quite the sport fisher herself.”
Hester put aside her irritation with this disclosure long enough to wonder what Aunt was up to.
“Ian knows the woods well, and a haunch of venison never goes to waste,” Hester said. “I doubt his lordship wants to idle along the Dee with a fishing pole and a book.”
“On the contrary, Miss Daniels. While I’ve been on many a shoot, I can’t say I’ve had much opportunity to fish.”
Bother and damnation. “It would be my pleasure to take you, then.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized he’d hooked her with only a few words. Plucked her from the current of her intentions and left her flopping on the verge of his own plans.
The last thing she wanted to do was spend time idling about with this spoiled, overgrown exponent of English aristocracy.
“I shall look forward to it, then,” his lordship said. “Maybe tomorrow, after we take out the horses?”
Aunt clapped her hands together gently. “Oh, excellent! Hester so enjoys a good gallop, and she hasn’t had a riding companion since she got here. What a pity Fiona has no mount of her own.”
Hester tried not to let her consternation show: by some legerdemain of manners, she was now accompanying Spathfoy both riding and fishing.
“Perhaps I shall get the child a pony.” Spathfoy looked intrigued with the notion. “My sisters all had ponies before they had tutors.”
“Fiona’s parents might have something to say about such an extravagant gift, my lord. I believe Matthew wanted to be the one to teach his daughter how to ride, though the thought is most generous of you.”
Hester fired off a smile to go with her scold. Spathfoy smiled back, all even white teeth and genial condescension. “An uncle, particularly one newly introduced to the child, must be allowed to dote, Miss Daniels.”
“I’m off to the kitchen,” Aunt said, laying her folded serviette on the table. “I will alert Deal to the need for a picnic today, and likely one tomorrow as well, though you won’t catch any fish if Fiona comes along.”
Before she could put both hands on the table, Spathfoy was on his feet and poised to shift her chair. He waited with every appearance of solicitude while Aunt scooted to the edge of her seat, bounced a little on her backside, then heaved up to a standing position.
“Shall I escort you to the kitchen, my lady?”
“Lord, no. Deal would have kittens to think of such a great man among the scullery maids and potboys. If you’d hand me my cane, my lord, I’ll toddle along under my own steam.”
Deal might also be tempted to take a carving knife to the great man’s self-importance, though Hester kept that thought to herself when Spathfoy resumed his seat.
“Our elders present us with a puzzle.” He poured himself more tea and gestured with the pot at Hester’s cup.
“Please.” When tea was one’s only source of fortitude, it would be silly to refuse another cup.
“I never know with my father whether he’s being irascible out of habit, or whether he’s provoking me into some display of dominance over him so he might retire from the duties of the marquessate, satisfied that I have sufficient pugnacity to step into his shoes.”
That sentence was long, even for him. Hester searched through it for plain meaning while she drank half her tea. “Your father is too proud to ask for your help.”
Spathfoy peered at his teacup, and it was a satisfying moment, both because she’d flummoxed him and because his father apparently flummoxed him. Spathfoy had mentioned sisters, too—in the plural—which boded well for Hester’s spirits.
“It is perhaps more the case my father and I don’t know how to ask for help from each other.” He sounded unhappy to draw this conclusion, the honesty of the sentiment ruining Hester’s gloat entirely.
“What help would you request of him, my lord?”
Spathfoy dabbed a bite of eggs onto a corner of toast the way an artist might add paint to a canvas. “Interesting question, though I don’t seek the help he proffers enthusiastically. The man is forever tossing prospective brides at me. He has a good eye for horses, though.”
“And the two don’t correlate? An eye for a bride and an eye for a horse?”
Too late, Hester realized she’d left him worlds of room for sly innuendo about mounts, rides, and other vulgar jokes. Jasper would have been smirking lasciviously at the very least. She took refuge in draining her teacup.
Spathfoy wasn’t smirking, though humor lurked in his green eyes. “My mother and my sisters would skin me alive did I intimate a connection between brides and horses, but if there is one, it likely has to do with tossing a man aside when his attention lapses and giving his pride a hard landing.”
A polite, even friendly rejoinder, damn him, and yet Hester wished she could leave him to his own company at breakfast, even though he was a guest newly arrived.
“What of your own father, Miss Daniels? Was he inclined to provide helpful advice?”
<
br /> “He was not.” Even the thought of the late Baron Altsax had Hester’s tea and toast threatening to rebel. “He provided his opinions to all and sundry nonetheless.” She lifted her teacup to her mouth, only to find it empty, and when she set it down on the table, she realized Spathfoy could see quite well what she’d done.
“I never did offer my condolences on your loss.”
If he patted her hand again she’d be smashing her teacup against the wall. “My thanks, Lord Spathfoy. You also never told Aunt how long you can stay with us.”
The inquiry wasn’t rude, exactly, put like that, but he clearly wasn’t fooled.
“I am at leisure, Miss Daniels, and it has been far too long since I’ve enjoyed a Scottish holiday. When do we depart for this ramble Fiona seems so delighted to contemplate?”
* * *
Scotland was good for the body. Tye had forgotten this in the years since his boyhood visits.
The old house bore the slight tang of peat smoke rather than the pungent stench of coal. Out of doors, the air was crisp, the light clear, and under all the other scents—garden, stable, breakfast parlor, or freshly turned earth—heather wafted gently through the senses.
The hills ringing the shire bore purplish hems of heather; the inn where he’d stayed in Ballater had offered heather ale. He’d enjoyed a tankard and enjoyed the freedom to sit in the common and simply watch the passing scene. He was also enjoying this morning respite on a tartan blanket by a gurgling little stream, though the company left a great deal to be desired.
“Is my niece always so prone to climbing?”
“Your height spares you the indignities and inconveniences of shorter stature, my lord.” Miss Daniels did not even glance up from her book to deliver this insight. If she sat any farther away, she’d be on the grass. “Those of us built on a less grandiose scale enjoy what height we can appropriate from trees, horses, and the terrain itself.”
Grandiose, not grand. Miss Daniels bore the scent of lemon verbena. Tye was not intimately acquainted with the lexicon of flowers, but he suspected lemon verbena might stand for, “May the ruddy bastard get himself back to England, the sooner the better.”
If only he could.
“Miss Daniels?”
“Hmm?” She tucked an errant lock of blond hair over one ear and kept her gaze on her book.
“Have I somehow given offense? I realize you were not forewarned of my visit, but I did write to your brother twice.”
She put her book down with particular patience and glanced at him as if he smelled a good deal less appealing than heather, but she was too much a lady to show it.
“My lord, it is curious to me that you would travel such a distance without any guarantee of your welcome. What if Matthew and Mary Fran had closed up the house during their summer travels? It was one plan under consideration.”
“Then I should have paid my respects to Balfour, enjoyed the Highland scenery currently so much in vogue, and taken myself back south. Lady Ariadne seemed cheered at the thought of a house guest. If I am mistaken in this regard, I will be happy to remove to the inn in Ballater while I further my acquaintance with my only niece.”
She closed her book, and Tye had the satisfaction of seeing her neatly cornered by manners and good breeding. When she did not speak but bit her full, rosy lip and regarded her closed book, he gave her a little more to think about.
“I am enjoying my stay, short though it has been. I am not much in the company of my female family, and yet your household at present is exclusively female.”
“And you like staying with a child, a dowager, and a spinster?”
“A spinster, Miss Daniels?” She was damned pretty for a spinster. Also quite young.
She lifted her chin so his gaze collided with a pair of solemn blue eyes. “There are worse terms for me, your lordship. Spinster is accurate. I’m not ashamed of it.”
And abruptly, they were beyond the bounds of manners. Her gaze was steady, neither challenging nor defensive, though any fool could see her dignity was supported by some deep hurt.
“You have me at a loss, Miss Daniels.”
She regarded her book of verse the same way Fiona had regarded her injured ankle the day before. “I am a jilt, at least, and others called me a tease—”
“Aunt Hester! I see a fish!” Fiona stood on her tree limb and pointed to the shallows of the burn, making the entire limb as well as its shadows shake. “He’s a great big fellow and taking a nap in the reeds not two feet from the bank.”
Wanting nothing so much as to escape from the faint accusation in Miss Daniels’s somber gaze, Tye yanked off first one boot, then the other. “You mustn’t wake him up. Stay where you are, Fiona. My grandfather showed me how this is done.” He stripped off his socks and rolled up his breeches.
“Will you guddle him, Uncle? Can I watch?”
“You can watch quietly.” Tye rose off the blanket. “Point to him again, then climb down slowly and without making a sound.”
“There.” Fiona stage-whispered and gestured to the dappled shallows. “You can see his tail sticking out from the reeds.”
Tye set his boots and socks aside and stepped one foot at a time into the shallow water downstream from the fish.
“God in heaven.” He stood for a moment, enjoying the shock of the near-freezing water. “This is invigorating. Do not think of dipping a single toe into this water, Fiona. Your word on it.”
“But I want to guddle him too!” She clambered out of the tree and stomped up to the bank. “I saw him first, and I’ve never tickled a fish before.”
“Then this is your chance to learn from your elders. Hush, child. This requires concentration.”
It required no such thing. It merely wanted patience, common sense, and an inhuman tolerance for cold water. By degrees, Tye inched up along the streambed, keeping the delicately waving fishtail in his sight at all times. When he was near enough to the fish, he dipped down on one knee and slipped both hands into the water.
“You start at the tail,” he said softly. If Fiona leaned one inch farther out, she’d fall into the water. “My grandda said to begin with one finger and stroke slowly, slowly along the belly.”
He made contact with a cool, smooth fish belly, using the tip of one index finger.
“And you mustn’t rush it. Mustn’t disturb his dreams, but rather, steal into them.” He added a second finger in a slow, back-and-forth stroking motion. “If you get greedy, you’ll wake him rather than lull him deeper to sleep.”
“Is it like a lullaby when you tickle him?” Fiona’s voice was soft and wondering, just as Tye’s had been when his grandfather had first shown him how to tickle a fish.
“Like a lullaby, or rubbing a baby’s back to coax her to sleep.” He shifted his fingers up the fish’s belly, half inch by half inch. “He’s quite good size.”
“I want to see!” Fee hissed out her frustration, slapping her fists against her thighs.
“Fiona.” Miss Daniels’s voice was soft with reproach from her place at Fiona’s side. “Lord Spathfoy is not freezing his toes off so you can scare the fish away with your chatter.”
Fiona fell silent as Tye stroked his fingers back and forth, back and forth. “I’m close.” He was whispering, and when he glanced up, he saw both Fiona and Miss Daniels’s expressions were rapt with expectation.
“Another moment.” Another moment and his calf submerged in the burn would cramp or lose sensation altogether. Tye slid his hands around the fish and closed gently.
“That’s it. There we go.”
He lifted the fish up out of the water, feeling inordinately pleased with himself.
“He’s enormous!” Fiona reached out a hand then dropped it. “May I touch him?”
“Of course, though he’ll start to thrash here directly.” The fish was panting, dazed, and soon to realize its mortal peril.
“He’s very pretty, and cold.” Fiona ran a finger over the fish’s side. “He looks like the li
ght from the water is caught in his skin.”
“His scales,” Tye said. “If we don’t toss him back soon, he’ll die.”
“Toss him back?” Fiona glanced over at her aunt. “Won’t Deal want him for the kitchen?”
Miss Daniels looked horrified at the very notion. “We won’t tell Deal quite how big he is.” While Tye watched, Miss Daniels ran her fingers down the cold, scaly length of the fish’s body. “Best toss him back quickly, my lord.”
Tye hadn’t expected her to touch the fish then command its rescue. He gently lobbed the creature to the far side of the stream, and they all three watched as it swam away down the current.
Fiona slapped her hands together. “That was capital! If we see another, may I try?”
“You may,” Tye said, slogging up onto the bank. “With your aunt’s permission.”
“Not by yourself, Fiona MacGregor. The burn is a pretty little stream now, but one storm higher up in the hills, and it can rage over its banks.”
“Why can’t I ever do anything by myself?” The fish forgotten, the child repaired to her tree—a reading tree, rather than a treaty oak—and began to climb.
Tye waited while Miss Daniels resumed a place on the blanket, then took a spot immediately beside her just to see what she’d do. “You allow her to address her elders in such a manner?”
She picked up her book. “Why don’t you give her a stern talking to, Uncle? Let her see that with merely a cross word, she can pique your interest and rivet your attention. As fascinated as she is with you—or perhaps with your horse—she’ll be bickering the livelong day in no time. And she’s right: she is left little to her own devices.”
Miss Daniels turned a page, as if she were reading in truth.
“You’ve piqued my interest, Miss Daniels.”
She looked up, her expression gratifyingly wary. “My lord?”
“You mentioned the words jilt and tease. These are pejoratives, and I would have you explain them.” He kept his voice down out of deference to the child’s proximity, though Fiona was warbling among the boughs in Gaelic about her love gone over the sea.
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