Once Upon a Tartan mt-2

by Grace Burrowes

  “Why do people talk about the weather?” Fiona queried. She aimed her question at a piece of braised lamb gracing the end of her fork.

  “Eat your food, Fee dear, don’t lecture it.”

  The girl popped the meat into her mouth and chewed vigorously.

  “I’m just asking,” she said a moment later. “The weather is always there, and we can’t do anything about it, so why bring it up all the time as if it had manners to correct or ideas we could listen to?”

  Tye topped off his wine and did the same for the ladies. “I will admit, Fiona, that weather would make a less interesting dinner companion than you, who have both manners to correct and all kinds of unorthodox ideas.”

  “What is the French word for un-ortho-ducks, and what does it mean?”

  He took another sip of his wine. He was beginning to feel that slight distance between his mind, his emotions, and his bodily awareness, that suggested he’d had rather too many sips of wine.

  Lady Ariadne murmured something in Gaelic that Tye did not catch—the child had addled his wits that greatly—and a servant brought Fiona a small glass of wine.

  “For your digestion, my dear, but take small sips only, or it could have the opposite of its intended effect.”

  The girl took a dainty taste of her libation, showing no ill effects, which was the outside of too much.

  Properly reared children did not dine at table with adults.

  They did not run roughshod over the dinner conversation.

  On this sceptered isle, they did not sip passably good table wine as if it were served to them nightly.

  And a proper gentleman did not sit across from a decent young woman and mentally revisit the feel of her unbound hair sliding over his hands like blond silk. He did not watch her mouth when she drank her wine. He did not wonder if she would cosh him on his head if he attempted to kiss her again.

  The longest meal of Tye’s life ended when Lady Ariadne pushed to her feet. “If you young people will excuse me, I’ll retire to my rooms and leave you to turn Fee loose for a gambol in the garden. Fiona, I am very proud of you, my dear. Your manners are impressive, and we will work on your conversation. Fetch me my cane and wish me sweet dreams.”

  Fiona scrambled out of her chair to retrieve her great-aunt’s cane from where it was propped near the door. “Thank you, Aunt. Good night, sweet dreams, sleep well, I love you.”

  Tye rose, thinking this reply had the sound of an oft-repeated litany, one that put a damper on the irritation he’d been nursing through the meal. He frowned down at Lady Ariadne.

  “Shall I escort you, my lady? I’m sure Miss Daniels can see the child to the gardens.”

  “No, thank you, my lord. Until breakfast, my dears.”

  She tottered off, leaving an odd silence in her wake.

  “Aunt is very old,” Fiona said. “It’s easy to love old people, because they’re so nice.”

  “It’s easy to love you,” Miss Daniels said, “because you’re very kind as well, and you made such an effort to be agreeable at table tonight. My lord, please don’t feel compelled to accompany us. Fiona and I are accustomed to rambling in our own gardens without escort.”

  Except they weren’t her gardens. If she’d taken his arm quietly, without comment, he might have let her excuse him at the main staircase, but she had to intimate he was not welcome.

  “I would be delighted to join you for a stroll among the roses, and I have to agree. Fiona acquitted herself admirably, considering her tender years.”

  He winged his arm at Miss Daniels, half expecting—half wishing for—an argument.

  She placed her bare hand on his sleeve. “Come along, Fiona, the light won’t last much longer, and you’ve stayed up quite late as it is.”

  They made a slow progress through the house and out onto the back terrace. With the scent of lemon verbena wafting through his nose, Tye came to two realizations, neither of which helped settle his meal.

  First, when he kissed a woman, it was usually a pleasant moment, and possibly a prelude to some copulatory pleasant moments, but the kiss itself did not linger in his awareness. Kissing was a means to an end, a means he was happy enough to bypass if the lady perceived and shared a willingness to proceed to the end.

  With Hester Daniels, the kiss itself had been his goal. He’d wanted to get his mouth on hers, and yes, he’d wanted more than that from her too. What had irritated him over dinner was not the child’s chattering, or her forwardness. It was not the paucity of adult conversation or the unpretentious quality of the place settings or the simplicity of the food itself.

  What irritated him was the memory of that kiss, lingering in his awareness like some upset or shining moment—he wasn’t sure which. He’d enjoyed that kiss tremendously.

  The second realization was no more comforting: he should not kiss Hester Daniels again, no matter how much he might want to.

  And he did want to. Very much.

  * * *

  “Aunt Ariadne insists I owe you no apology, but I’m proffering one nonetheless.”

  Hester watched as Fiona went from rose to rose, sniffing each one. The end of her nose would be dusted with pollen at the rate she was making her olfactory inventory.

  “An apology?” Sitting beside Hester, Spathfoy stretched out long legs and crossed them at the ankles. He’d been his usual self at dinner, both mannerly and somehow unapproachable, patient with Fiona, solicitous of Aunt Ree, and toward Hester—unreadable.

  “I kissed you, my lord. This is forward behavior, and regardless of Aunt’s interpretation of the rules of Polite Society, I am offering you my apologies for having taken liberties with your lordship’s person.”

  He was quiet for a moment in a considering, strategizing sort of way. This was rotten of him in the extreme, when he might have simply accepted Hester’s apology and remarked on the stars winking into view on the eastern horizon.

  “Correct me if I err, Miss Daniels, but I don’t believe yours was the only kiss shared between us.”

  “That is of no moment.”

  Another silence, one Hester did not enjoy.

  “My kiss was of no moment, but yours—a chaste peck on my right cheek, I do believe—requires that you apologize to me?”

  Hester could not tell if he was amused or affronted, but she was mortified. The damned man could probably detect her blush even in the fading light.

  “Young ladies are expected to uphold certain standards, my lord. Gentlemen are expected to have lapses.”

  Fiona sank down in the grass some yards off and started making catapults out of grass flowers. She shot little seed heads in all directions, then lay on her back and tried launching them right into the evening sky, though they fell to earth, usually landing on or near Fee’s face.

  “Miss Daniels, you would not allow me to apologize for my lapse, if my recollection serves, but if you insist on apologizing to me, then I insist on apologizing to you.”

  A little torpedo of grass seeds landed at Hester’s feet. “You have nothing to apologize for.” Except this ridiculous conversation. She wondered if the son of a marquess was somehow exempt from the manners every other gentleman—almost every other gentleman—had drilled into him before he was out of short coats.

  “I have nothing to apologize for. I am fascinated to hear this.” He sounded utterly bored, or perhaps appalled.

  “I was getting back on the horse.” She would explain this to him, lest he be mistaken about her motives. Aunt’s version of events, upon reflection, had been helpful after all.

  “You were mounting your horse? Before or after I kissed you, using my tongue, in your mouth, and my bare hands on various locations a gentleman does not presume to touch?”

  Wretched man. “I wasn’t getting back on the horse in the literal sense. By kissing you, I was demonstrating to myself that my failed engagement was not permanently wounding.”

  His arm settled along the back of their bench. To appearances, he was a man completely
at ease after a simple, satisfying meal, while Hester was a lady who wished she’d not had so much wine. Again.

  “What did Merriman do to make you wish you’d coshed him on his head?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your esteemed former fiancé. You were tempted to resort to violence with him, which makes me suspect he attempted more than a mere kiss.”

  Mere kiss? Mother of God. But how to answer?

  He did not harry her for a reply, so Hester sat silently beside him, aware of him to a painful degree, staring at his hand where it rested on his thigh. His arm was at her back, his length along her side, his attention focused on her intently despite the lazy inflection of his voice and the apparent ease of his body.

  It became difficult to breathe normally.

  “Do I conclude from your silence, Miss Daniels, that your former fiancé attempted to anticipate the conjugal vows, and you were not impressed with his behavior?”

  His voice held no more inflection than if he’d been complimenting Mary Fran’s roses, though Hester’s heart began to thump against her ribs.

  “You may conclude something of that nature.”

  His silences were torturing her even as she dreaded the next question.

  “In that case, I accept your apology, madam. I would regard it as a kindness if you would accept mine as well. The Bourbons are without equal when it comes to scent, whereas the Damasks lack subtlety, don’t you agree?”

  She managed a nod, becoming aware of the fragrance perfuming the evening around them only when he’d pointed it out to her. She became aware of something else too: Spathfoy’s arm lightly encircling her shoulders, a solid, warm weight, perhaps intended as a comfort, more likely intended to mean nothing at all.

  Four

  The MacGregors had earned coin until the previous summer by opening Balfour House to paying guests while the royal family was in residence at nearby Balmoral Castle. From Quinworth’s perspective, this was more contemptible than if they’d resorted to trade.

  It was one thing to labor for one’s bread or to make a profit off those laboring for their bread. The land alone could no longer sustain the lifestyle the upper classes maintained, and even Tye’s father acknowledged that much. To make money out of nothing more than social and geographical convenience, though, was in Quinworth’s estimation indefensible—a complete disregard of the standards and dictates of social propriety.

  Tye suspected his very practical mother would have had a thing or two to say about such a conclusion, if she’d been on hand to hear it.

  Tye found the MacGregors’ choices resourceful, and doubted his own family could have been creative enough to seize such an opportunity in the wake of famine, massive emigration, and decades of political persecution.

  “Welcome to Balfour House.” A tall, black-haired woman with a gracious smile on her lovely face and an arm around Ian MacGregor’s waist greeted Tye on a wide stone terrace. “Ian warned me you could be his cousin in coloring and height.”

  “Augusta, my heart, may I make known to you Tiberius, Earl of Spathfoy, and Fee’s uncle. Spathfoy, my lady and I bid you welcome. I hope you’re hungry, because the kitchen has been bankrupting the larders the livelong day in anticipation of feeding a genuine English lord.”

  Tye bowed over the countess’s hand. “A courtesy lord only, and I hope a courteous lord. Your home is beautiful.”

  “My wife is beautiful,” Balfour said, smiling shamelessly at his lady. “The house is just a place to raise our children. Come along. Augusta will want you to see some of the gardens before she lets us down a wee dram in anticipation of the meal.”

  “Ian will try to get you drunk,” the lady interjected, slipping a hand through Tye’s arm. “It’s his duty as host to ply you with whisky, and mine to ply you with food. What brought you to the Highlands, my lord?”

  It was another gauntlet, with husband and wife handing off the examination of the witness as neatly as two seasoned football players would pass the ball between them down the field.

  How was his family? And his dear mother?

  Was he missing the social whirl in Town?

  Only as the meal wound down—and an excellent meal it was, too—did Tye understand they’d been toying with him, amusing themselves in a manner only a closely attuned married couple might consider entertaining.

  “I must excuse myself,” Lady Balfour said, getting to her feet. “My routine calls for a stop by the nursery at this hour, so I’ll leave you gentlemen to your port. Lord Spathfoy, I bid you good night. Once I get to the nursery, it sometimes takes Ian prying me away from our son bodily before I’ll leave that baby.”

  Balfour leaned in to kiss his wife’s cheek, and Tye heard him whisper something in her ear in Gaelic about dreams and lectures. The lady smiled prettily and withdrew, her husband watching a part of her anatomy Tye dared not even notice.

  The Scots were daft, and apparently marriage to a Scot resulted in daftness even in women raised among the English aristocracy. Tye wondered what his mother might have said about the effect on a Scottish woman of marrying an English noble.

  “If you prefer port, Spathfoy, I’m bound as your host to provide it, but I’ve some whisky I typically bring out only for special occasions, if you’re game.”

  “I’m a special occasion?”

  “To your family you likely are, but it’s plain to me I haven’t gotten you drunk yet, so I’m resorting to my best stratagems.” Balfour offered this comment with such candid good cheer, Tye almost believed he was teasing. Almost.

  “And why must I become inebriated?”

  “Let’s take our drinks on the back terrace, shall we? I love the gloaming, and if the dew is falling just so, I’ll hear my wife singing the bairn a lullaby. I can become inebriated on that alone.”

  Balfour was shameless about his family attachments, which was so different from what Tye had been raised with, Tye couldn’t find it in himself to be appalled.

  They stopped by a library, which wasn’t exactly crammed with books, and Balfour opened a sideboard and passed Tye a decanter. “We’ll use glasses in case her ladyship tries for a sneak inspection from the nursery window.”

  “Somehow, Balfour, if she’s spying from the window, I doubt she’ll be doing so for the sake of evaluating our etiquette.”

  Balfour smiled wolfishly. “Perhaps she won’t be.” Tye was surprised when the man did not wink but led him through French doors straight to the terrace.

  “You are a guest under my roof and distant family, so I will appreciate some honesty,” Balfour said as he took a bench at the edge of the terrace. He poured them each a drink and passed one to Tye, who remained standing. “To your health.”

  “And yours.” Tye sipped his drink cautiously, but God in heaven, it was sublime libation. He took a place beside Balfour on the stone bench. “What is this?”

  “We’ve taken to calling it the laird’s cache. My master distiller and I came across about twenty barrels of this when we were doing an inventory last year. I suspect it’s at least twenty years old, but McDowell claims it’s twice that. We’re decanting it one barrel at a time.”

  They sipped in respectful silence for some minutes. Tye tried to mentally describe the flavors gracing his palate, but it was pointless when faced with such variety and subtlety. The drink didn’t burn its way into his vitals, it illuminated him from the inside out—like a certain young lady’s smile.

  “Do your royal neighbors know you’ve drink like this to offer your guests?”

  “Oh, of course. We send over a few bottles in welcome every summer. Albert is a man of refinement, so at least we know it isn’t going to waste.”

  More silence as Balfour topped off their drinks. “I’m plying you with my best whisky, Spathfoy. I expect a few honest answers in return.”

  Ah, so the real questioning was going to begin. “I am generally considered an honest man.”

  “Did you know Matthew Daniels has initiated a suit to assume
legal guardianship of Fiona?”

  Tye let the glow of his last sip of whisky fade before he answered. “I did not.”

  Balfour’s disclosure made sense though. This might account for Quinworth’s sudden interest in the child. A marquess might ignore his granddaughter, but only as long as nobody else—no other wealthy, titled Englishman, for example—was stepping into the breach. Still, Tye felt a spike of resentment that his father had sent him into battle less than well informed.

  “Neither did I. I’m not sure Mary Fran knew. Matthew is devoted to the child.”

  As Quinworth had not been; as Tye had not been. “That is commendable.”

  “To see the girl leave Balfour House about tore the heart from my chest.”

  Scottish hyperbole, no doubt. “She’s a delightful child.” Which was English hyperbole.

  “She’s a damned force of nature, like her mother. She’s also the first good thing to happen to this family in nigh fifty years. I say this, though it means I must overcome my reluctance to admit anything good could come of yet another decent Scottish girl’s rape at the hands of an English soldier. Excuse me. Perhaps I am the one becoming inebriated.” He lifted his glass to peer at his drink. “I meant seduction, not rape.”

  Tye set his glass down between them on the stone bench. “You accuse my late brother of rape?”

  “No… no, though I’d like to.” Balfour’s tone was thoughtful. “I accuse him of seducing an innocent, getting her with child, and having every intention of leaving the girl ruined if she refused his suit.”

  “Now this is interesting.” Tye kept his tone speculative, though the insult intended was blatant. “My family regards Fiona’s origins as an example of yet another loyal English soldier being led astray by a local woman intent on insinuating herself into the coffers of his wealthy and titled family.”

  “Interesting, indeed. I think I would have noticed my own sister doing this insinuating you mention, particularly when we haven’t a Quinworth copper to show for it—nor a single letter or note from the wealthy, titled family since Fiona’s birth years ago.”