Once Upon a Tartan

Ten

Hester was leaving, and there wasn’t a damned thing Tye could do to prevent it. He brought Rowan down to the walk and considered kicking the marchioness out of the Edinburgh properties so Tye might take up residence in Scotland.

Or he might not kick her out. He might give his mother an opportunity to compete with his father as the primary justification—in a long list of justifications—for why an otherwise well-blessed man might take up drinking with intent to obliterate his reason.

“And you’d come with me.” He ran a gloved hand down the horse’s crest, feeling that today, for the first time in weeks, Rowan had been truly settled and relaxed. As if even the horse knew things weren’t going to change.

Tye was composing a letter to his mother in his head when a groom came tearing down the lane hotfoot from the stable yard.

“Beg pardon, your lordship, but best come quick! I’ll take the beast, for you mustn’t let him add to the riot.”

“Herriot, what are you going on about?” Tye kept his voice calm as he swung down and handed off Rowan’s reins.

“The marquess is taking the young miss to task, and God help us but the girl’s got a fox and she’s not having any of his lordship’s nonsense, not none a’tall.”

“A fox?”

“Please make haste, your lordship. The fox looks sickly to me.”

Not good. Not good at all. Tye loped off in the direction of raised voices, and found a tableau portending multiple tragedies.

“You put the damned, rotten little blighter down this instant, young lady, because I tell you to.”

The Marquess of Quinworth was standing some four yards away from Fiona, holding an enormous old horse pistol, muzzle pointed downward. Fiona held her ground, a half-grown fox kit in her arms, her chin jutting, her posture radiating defiance.

“If I put him down, you’ll kill him, you awful man. You go away!”

“Good morning, Fiona.” Tye forced himself to speak calmly. “Have you made a new friend?”

Her shoulders relaxed a fraction. “I found him, and I’m going to keep him. His name is Frederick.”

“Like Frederick the Great?” Tye sidled closer, while dread coiled tightly in his belly. The animal was ill—its eyes were clouded, its coat matted, and in Fiona’s embrace, it stirred weakly, head lolling as if the beast were drunk.

“Stand aside, Spathfoy!” The marquess bellowed this command, and even his roaring did not appear to affect the fox. “If that thing should bite you, you’re doomed.”

Fiona peered around Tye at the marquess. “Make Grandpapa be quiet, please. Frederick doesn’t feel well, and yelling doesn’t help anything.”

“I quite agree with you. Quinworth”—Tye did not raise his voice—“desist.” He got close enough to see that Fiona wasn’t being defiant so much as protective. “I don’t think Frederick is feeling quite the thing, Fiona.”

“He’s sick. We can help him get better so he can find his way home.”

Tye went down on his haunches and reached out to stroke a gloved finger down the animal’s ratty fur. “You think he’s homesick?”

She nodded and took a shuddery breath. “He was in the petunias, falling over and crying. I think he’s crying for his m-mama.”

Tye fished out a handkerchief. “Compose yourself, Fiona, and let me hold him for a bit.”

“Spathfoy, for God’s sake!” the marquess hissed from several yards off. “The thing’s rabid. I’ll not bury another son of mine for some stupid—”

He fell silent while Tye gently disentangled the fox from Fiona’s embrace.

“You promise you won’t set him down?”

“I will not set him down without your permission. Wipe your tears.”

She honked loudly into his handkerchief and sat right in the dirt of the stable yard beside Tye. “I hate it here. I miss home, and I feel sick all the time, inside.”

Tye regarded the creature in his arms—there was no intelligence in the clouded eyes. Beneath the matted fur, the animal was nothing but skin and bones. It hadn’t been crying for its mother; it had been crying for death to end its pain and misery.

He glanced up to see his father looking thunderous a few yards off, and felt something shift in his chest. The way became clear between one heartbeat and the next, regardless of the consequences to him or to whatever plans the marquess was hatching.

“I don’t want you to feel that way anymore, Fee. If I promise to take Frederick out to the covert near the millpond, will you find your aunt Hester and ask her to help you pack?”

“You mean I can go home? I can really go home?”

“It might take us a day or two to make the arrangements, and Albert probably would not enjoy the journey, but yes, you can go home.”

Tye looked over Fiona’s head to catch his father’s eye. The marquess was standing very still, for once silent and not arguing.

“Fee.” Hester spoke softly from behind the marquess. “I’d like nothing better in the world than to help you pack. Let your uncle Tye take the fox back to his family, and you come with me.”

Fiona cast a last look at the beast lying passively in Tye’s grasp. “You promise?”

She was asking if he’d keep his word about the fox, not about her journey home.

“I have given my word, Fiona. I would not break it.”

She got up. “Good-bye, Frederick. Someday I’ll see you again, like Androcles.”

“Fee.” Hester held out her hand, barely suppressed fear in her voice. And the fear was justified. Every adult watching this tableau knew that one bite, one scratch, and the girl might have been consigned to a miserable death.

Tye stroked a hand over the fox’s matted pelt. “I do wonder how you’ll transport that rabbit clear back to Aberdeenshire.”

“I can take Harold?”

Now Tye rose with the fox in his arms. “You can if you can figure out a way to safely transport him. I’m sure your aunts will help you think of something.”

When Hester and Joan had led Fiona safely toward the house, Quinworth holstered his gun. “For God’s sake, some one of you lot get Spathfoy a pair of stout sacks.” He stomped off, leaving Tye to keep his promise to Fiona.

The fox had the grace to expire at the moment Tye laid him among the weeds, thus allowing the stable boys to properly dispose of the remains. After muttering a self conscious prayer for the departed—Fiona might ask, after all—Tye then went to his rooms and scrubbed himself from head to foot with lye soap. Only when he’d changed and ordered his coat, shirt, and gloves to be burned, did he head down to the library in search of another beast who was ill, in pain, and creating havoc for all around him—while he very likely missed his family.

The marquess was sitting at the estate desk when Tye found him, staring at pile of folded letters and looking for the first time in Tye’s experience like an old man. That was a pity and a shame, and it made not one goddamned, bloody, perishing bit of difference.

“Fiona is going home.”

The marquess’s chin came up, reminding Tye of… Fiona. “Says who?”

“I do. She’s not safe here. That damned animal could have ended her days with a single bite, and as it is, Hester is likely still scrubbing the girl from head to toe with strong soap. Even the saliva of an animal that sick can cause death. What in the hell were you thinking?”

“What was I thinking!” Quinworth roared at his son and came around the desk. “What was I thinking? You are my son and heir, and you took that reeking, vile creature into your grasp without a thought for what it would do to your mother and sisters to watch you fall prey to madness and misery! I cannot be held accountable for the child’s queer starts and obstinate demeanor. You could have been killed, Spathfoy, the title sent into escheat, and God knows how this family would have survived.”

The marquess dropped his voice. “The girl stays, Spathfoy. I am Quinworth, the head of her family, and I say she stays.”

Tye felt a calm descend on him, not a forced, artificial steeling of nerves necessary to weather a crisis, but a bone-deep sense of unshakable purpose. “You did not, or perhaps could not, act in a manner consistent with her safety. Your bellowing and obstreperousness were the opposite of what the situation called for. The girl goes home, my lord, or I will renounce your title at the first opportunity.”

“Renounce—!”

“I will renounce the Quinworth title, I will provide a home for my mother and sisters, and I will dower my sisters handsomely, unless Fiona goes home to the Highlands tomorrow, there to dwell unmolested and undisturbed by you and your damnable machinations.”

“You would turn your back on a title more than three hundred years old? You’d have nothing but that paltry Scottish earldom from your mother’s people, and you’d content yourself with that?”

“The girl goes home, my lord. I want your word on it.”

Quinworth gave him a curious, who-the-hell-are-you glance, and Tye’s calm became almost happy. Sending Fiona home was the right thing to do; he only wished he’d thought of a way to do it sooner. “Fiona is not safe in your care, Quinworth. If you can’t understand a child well enough to keep her safe, then she’s better off elsewhere.”

“The beast was rabid, Spathfoy… I was not expecting my granddaughter to march up to the stables cradling a rabid fox in her arms. I’ve known her only a few days… I say she stays, and I am Quinworth.”

His lordship sat heavily on the desk, but Tye was having none of these maunderings. The relevant truth popped into his head all of a piece.

“What you are, sir, is mean, and we none of us have to do what you say. Fiona goes home, tomorrow if I can arrange it. You can dower her or you can establish a trust for her. If Balfour allows it, you can visit her. I do not fault you for not knowing her, Quinworth, but you do not love her, and that is why she must be returned to her family by those of us who do love her.”

Tye waited for a response, but his lordship’s expression had become as blank as the fox’s. When Tye left the library, Quinworth was still sitting on the desk, his backside half-covering some official-looking document.

Hester had made Fiona take two baths and scrubbed the girl thoroughly each time. She’d washed Fiona’s hands with whisky; she’d ordered the child’s clothes burned and the ashes buried deep. Over and over throughout the day, she’d examined Fiona for any broken skin, even something as trivial as a hangnail, and when Fiona had finally fallen into a peaceful sleep, Hester had sat watching the girl breathe.

There was no worse death than rabies. Every child was raised with some ghoulish tale of a person who’d suffered that fate. Grown men had been known to take their own lives after being mauled by a mad dog rather than brave a death from rabies.

And Tiberius Flynn had—

Hester cut the thought off. She’d start to cry again if she went down that road. Cry and lose her dinner and tear her hair.

The creature staring back at Hester from the vanity mirror was pale, haunted, and miserable. She was a woman who did not deserve a lifetime as Spathfoy’s wife, a woman who’d leapt to conclusions and judgments—wrong conclusions and bad judgments, yet again.

Tiberius Flynn was not coldhearted, ruthless, and self-absorbed. He had faults, but his worst fault was that he loved too well. His filial devotion was unswerving, his fraternal concern unrelenting, and his avuncular notions of duty and honor had very nearly earned him a lingering, terrible death.

Hester told herself she was crossing the hallway to apologize to him, to beg his understanding, and to make a final peace with him. This was not entirely a falsehood, but when Spathfoy looked up from his escritoire to regard her, she knew it was not the full truth either.

He was wearing spectacles, gold-rimmed reading spectacles that made him look more scholarly, more like a husband or a father, but no less like a lover.

“Hester.” He rose and approached her, his expression guarded. “If you’re having trouble sleeping, I can have the kitchen—”

She was plastered to his chest before he could finish speaking. “I’ll leave tomorrow. I’ll take Fee home, tomorrow, Tiberius, I promise, I just can’t— You might have been killed, worse than killed, and all because I didn’t keep an adequate eye on Fee, and then your father, with the gun—”

“Hush, Hester, calm yourself.” His arms came around her slowly but securely, which only made the ache in her chest worse. “I’ve told him he’ll not have the raising of her, not if he can’t keep her safe. I’ll take you to the train station myself, just please, don’t cry.”

She breathed in the clean scent of him, wallowed in the strength and warmth of his embrace. “Did you bathe, Tiberius? Did you scrub your hands? The fox was likely rabid. His lordship was right, I know he was.”

“Hush. I am unharmed, and believe me, I inspected and bathed my person thoroughly, several times.”

She wanted to inspect his person, and medical reasons were the least of her motivations. The need arose abruptly, barreling through all her other upsets with the raging clarity of hopeless desire.

“Tiberius, I want—” She worked the knot of his dressing gown open, leaving him standing there, his robe gaping. Her brain registered that he was not stopping her and he was not arguing with her.

Not reasoning with her. She slid her hands around his waist and leaned her forehead on his chest. “Please, Tiberius.”

“The train leaves at eleven in the morning, Hester.” He spoke gently, his words conveying compassion but not compromise. “I want you and the child gone from here before Quinworth can rally his defenses. It’s important to me that—”

She sank to her knees and pressed her face to his thigh. “Please.”

A quiet moment went by while she remained in the posture of a supplicant, then his hand stroked over her hair, a soft caress that granted her permission to take what she would of him before they parted. The frantic haste beating at her from within subsided. She took a slow, deep breath, exhaled, and put her mouth to the length of his cock.

He was not aroused, or not very aroused, which meant she participated orally in the building of his desire. By degrees, as she kissed, nuzzled, stroked, and suckled, his passion rose, until he stepped back.

“Hester, shall I take you to bed?”

“Yes. We shall take each other to bed.” She paused only to remove every stitch of her nightclothes while he shrugged out of his robe. In a state of complete undress, he crossed the room to lock the door.

Hester sat on the bed and continued to drink in the sight of him as he used his tooth powder at the washbasin. “You aren’t telling me this is misguided, Tiberius.”

“I don’t need to tell you that, Hester. If you truly think this is misguided, you’ll cross the hallway to your own room.” His observation held logic, not arrogance; if anything, he was smiling slightly at the basin. “Is Fiona managing?”

“She was exhausted. She did not and does not comprehend the danger she was in.”

“She’ll be a mother someday.” He glanced at her over his shoulder as he dragged a brush through his hair. “Or an aunt. She’ll understand then. I’ve had wires sent to Balfour.”

He would think of that. And then he was stalking over to the bed, looking not competent and practical, but gorgeous, aroused, and heartrendingly dear. “I do not guarantee that I can protect you from conception tonight, Hester Daniels.”

“It doesn’t signify.”

Now he looked like he wanted to argue, so she rose up on her knees and kissed him where he stood by the bed. “It does not signify. I will be gone in the morning, Tiberius. I understand that. I understand much that was not clear to me until today. For tonight, please just love me.”

He muttered something, which in Gaelic would have sounded very much like “I do,” but words were not of any interest to Hester when his mouth finally settled on hers. No matter he was not renewing his proposals, no matter she might never see him again; he was kissing her as if she were life and breath and sun all wrapped into one, as if his soul required it of him.

As if there were no tomorrow, which for them—as far as Hester was concerned—was the sad and unavoidable truth.

Hester was upset, seeking reassurances, and making a very great mistake. Tye’s duty was to kiss her forehead and steer her right out into the corridor, then shut and lock his door behind her.

This was the honorable course. His brain knew it, and even admonished him to follow such a course. His body was ignoring such pleas, and his heart had clapped its hands over its figurative ears.

She would not thank him in the morning for following the honorable course; she would look at him with big, bruised eyes and silently reproach him from memory for the rest of his blighted days. And if she wasn’t yet carrying his child, Tye could hope to effect such a miracle on what might otherwise be their last night together.

Duty and honor be damned, this was the woman he loved, the woman he was meant to go through life with, though she’d denied his every proposal.

Tye’s self-restraint in the past was nothing compared to the discipline he applied now. He laid Hester down on the enormous four-poster where he’d tossed and turned away the past week of nights, and came down over her. When he’d feasted for a time on her kisses, he worked his way south, treasuring her breasts, her soft, feminine belly, her sex.

She denied him nothing, not her kisses, not her sighs, not the sweet, secret female parts of her body. When he tucked her legs over his shoulders, he knew a passing regret that he hadn’t put a pair of his socks on her feet, the better to stroke his back with.

But only a passing regret. He deluged her with pleasure, showered her with it until he was certain she’d be sore for a week. And when at last he joined his body to hers, he vowed he’d wreak yet more pleasure upon her, so much pleasure that she would recall this night of loving for all her days.

He kept that vow, but when her body was convulsing around him, wringing the last drop of passion from their joining, Tye’s self-restraint collapsed, his good intentions disappeared, and he followed Hester into a pleasure as intense and as soul deep as it was bittersweet.

“This is my mother’s direction in Edinburgh. You should not need it, but I don’t like sending you off without even a maid.”

Hester’s lover from the previous night was nowhere to be found, except perhaps lurking in the green eyes of this serious, handsome man. “We’ll be fine, Tiberius. I’ve gotten quite used to traveling about by train.”

Fiona swung Hester’s hand. “I’ll be fine too. Will you say good-bye to Albert for me?”

“Of course, and let me stow this fellow for you.” Tye held up the carpetbag housing the rabbit. “You’ll have to watch that he isn’t nibbling through the fabric, Niece. A rabbit loose on Her Majesty’s rails will not do.” He stuffed the bag on the overhead rack, and the train whistle sounded a warning blast.

“I wish you were coming with us, Uncle, and Flying Rowan too.”

“I’ll write to you, Fiona, and I don’t want to hear about any cheating at cards either.” In the cramped confines of the compartment, he went down on his haunches and hugged the child tightly. “You are my favorite niece. Never forget it.”

“I’m your only niece.”

And again, for the hundredth time in twenty-four hours, Hester’s heart broke, this time simply from seeing Fiona share her favorite-niece joke with Tiberius, proof positive the man was secure in the child’s love and affection.

“Aunt.” Fiona tugged on Hester’s skirts, forcing her down into what was nearly a huddle with the child and the earl. “You must tell Uncle you love him and you will miss him.”

She’d spoken in Gaelic. With childish good intentions, she’d driven spikes into Hester’s composure and into her heart. Hester managed an answer only haltingly, and not because she stumbled over the Gaelic.

“I will miss him badly, but it’s like with the fox, Fiona. Spathfoy needs to be with his family, and they need him. They need him desperately.”

“We’re his family.”

Hester could only nod and rise to her feet, feeling older than Aunt Ree on a wet, chilly night. Spathfoy took her hand in his without even sparing a glance at the passage beyond the open door.

“You will write to me if there’s need?”

Another nod, while a lump as wide as the Highlands formed in her throat. The damned man kissed her forehead, and when he would have stepped back, Hester held on to him. “Tiberius, I am sorry.”

The train whistle blasted twice, and the look he gave her was torn. “I cannot fathom what you’d be apologizing for. Please get word to me when you’ve arrived safely in Ballater. I want a wire, Hester, not some damnable polite letter arriving after Michaelmas.”

“Uncle said a bad word.”

He tweaked Fiona’s braid. “I’m expressing strong feelings, probably not for the last time.” Then he swung his gaze back to Hester. “My dear, I must leave you now. There are things I must resolve with my father and my sisters before I am otherwise free. You will send word?”

He was harping on this. Hester finally realized he was concerned that she was with child. “I will send word if there’s need. Good-bye, Tiberius. Read your brother’s will.” The words had slipped out. She might send a wire, a few sentences of platitudes, but this admonition she’d give him in person.

The train whistle sounded three times, and on the platform, the conductor was bellowing the “all aboard.”

“Good-bye, Uncle. I won’t cheat. I love you!”

“I love you too, Fiona. Safe journey.”

A swift, hard kiss to Hester’s lips, and then he was gone. Hester took the backward-facing seat as the train began to move, the better to stare at Tiberius’s tall, still figure growing smaller and smaller, until a bend in the tracks took him entirely from her sight.

“But when are we going to get there?” Fiona’s question had long since taken on the singsong quality of a child determined to pluck the last adult nerve within hearing and pluck it hard.

They’d made the transfer smoothly enough in Edinburgh, but now, not twenty miles north of the city, the train had stopped dead on the tracks.

And not moved for an hour.

“I do not know when we’ll make Aberdeen, Fiona. Would you like to play another game of matches?”

“No. It’s too hard to spread out all the cards in this stupid train.”

“Shall we walk beside the tracks for a moment?”

“It’s going to rain, and then I shall get wet and stay wet until we get home. Why isn’t the train moving?”

“There’s an obstruction on the tracks.”

“What kind of obstruction?”

“I do not know.” Just as Hester hadn’t known five minutes earlier, and ten minutes, and twenty. Hester suspected it was not a trivial obstruction—a downed tree or a dead horse at least—a casual gesture by the hand of fate to make Hester doubt her determination to scurry north and lick her wounds.

“I miss Uncle.”

“I miss him too.”

“You should have stayed with him, Aunt. He’ll miss you and miss you.”

Oh, cruel child. Hester wanted to clap her hand over Fiona’s mouth.

“The train is moving!” Fiona pressed her nose to the window as the locomotive gave another lurch. “We’re moving backward!”

“We are indeed.” Away from Aberdeen, which was maddening, to say the least. “We’ll probably have to find another train to take us north, Fee. The day is likely to become quite long.”

Fiona said nothing, but stood on the seat to get down the carpetbag and peer inside, as she’d done frequently throughout their journey.

“It doesn’t smell very good in there. Harold is unhappy.”

“Then Harold will be relieved to reach home, as will we.”

“But home’s that way.” Fiona jerked her thumb to the north.

Swear words paraded through Hester’s weary brain—nasty, percussive, satisfying Anglo-Saxon monosyllables that would have sounded like music on Tiberius’s tongue.

“I am damned sick of this day, Niece.”

Fiona’s brows arched with surprise. “That was very good, Aunt. May I try?”

They turned the air of the compartment blue on the twenty-mile trip back down to Edinburgh, and shared not a few laughs, but when Hester was told there was no way to reach Aberdeen by nightfall, she wanted to cry.

“We could hire a carriage,” Fiona offered helpfully as they stood outside the busy station in Edinburgh.

“It would still take us days, Fee. We need to find decent accommodations for young ladies temporarily stranded far from home.”

“And a rabbit.” Fee tucked her hand into Hester’s. “Don’t forget Harold.”

Hester did not wrinkle her nose. “I would never forget dear Harold.”

“Uncle has a house here on Princes Street, and a very nice house in the country too. My grandmamma lives here.”

Hester was reminded of Tiberius tucking a folded piece of paper into her reticule when he’d parted from them on the train. “Princes Street, Fiona?”

A short ride by hack took them to the New Town address Tye had given them, and much to Hester’s relief—and probably Harold’s as well—the lady was home.

And she was breathtakingly beautiful.

Tall, stately, with classic features that would not yield much to age, Lady Quinworth also sported flaming hair going golden at her temples.

“Miss Daniels, I’m afraid you have me at something of a loss, but any friend of Tiberius is a friend of mine.” Her smile would warm a Highland winter and only grew more attractive as she turned it on Fiona. “And I am dying to meet this young lady, who I can only hope has also befriended Spathfoy.”

“He’s not my friend, he’s my uncle.”

The marchioness blinked. “Spathfoy is your uncle?”

Hester felt again the sensation of the train pulling out of the station at Newcastle, gathering momentum, and hurtling her at increasing speed in the wrong direction. “I can explain, my lady.”

“I’m sure you can.” Lady Quinworth turned to a waiting footman. “Take the ladies’ things up to the first guest room, Thomas. We’ll want tea with all the trimmings in the family parlor.”

“What about Harold?” Fiona held up the malodorous carpetbag. “He’s ever so tired of traveling too.” She grinned at the marchioness. “Bloody, damned tired.”

“Fiona!”

But the marchioness only smiled. This smile was different, warmer, with a hint of mischief. This smile reminded Hester painfully of Tiberius in a playful mood, and on the lady, it looked dazzling.

“The child no doubt gets her unfortunate vocabulary from her uncle. Come along, ladies, and bring Harold.”

Deirdre considered two possibilities. The first was that Tiberius had developed a liaison with a lady fallen on hard times, and the little girl was his love child, which was a fine thing for a mother to be finding out from somebody besides the son responsible.

Except Tiberius would have married the mother; without question he would have.

Which meant this was Gordie’s child. Fiona was old enough, and she had the look of Gordie in her merry eyes and slightly obstinate chin. When the child had been sent off with the housekeeper to enjoy a scented bath, Deirdre considered her remaining guest.

“Now that we are without little ears to mind us, Miss Daniels, I’d like to know how you came to be at Quinworth, and what exactly Spathfoy’s involvement is in that child’s life.”

Miss Daniels—who bore no noticeable resemblance to the child in her care—used the genteel prevarications. She sipped her tea, nibbled a sandwich, then set her tea down. “I believe Fiona is your granddaughter, my lady.”

“Are you her mother?”

“I am not. My brother Matthew is married to Fiona’s mother, Mary Frances MacGregor Daniels, or I suppose she’s Lady Altsax now, though they don’t use the title.”

“You’re that Miss Daniels?”

She showed no sign of being discommoded by the question, except for a slight tipping up of her chin. “I am the Miss Daniels who cried off her engagement to Jasper Merriman.”

“Have some more tea.” Deirdre decided the immediate liking she’d felt for the girl had been grounded in solid maternal instinct. “I received the most peculiar epistle from Spathfoy not a week past. I am to ruin young Mr. Merriman socially, to hint he has a dread disease that renders him unacceptable as a marriage prospect for any decent young lady.”

Miss Daniels’s smile was radiant. “That is diabolically clever. You must thank Tiberius for me when you see him next.”

Tiberius? “You won’t be seeing him yourself?”

The smile died. It did not fade, it died. “I do not think so. I rejected his proposal too, you see.”

“We will discuss that in due course. First, tell me how Fiona came to be in her uncle’s care.”

This necessitated a darting glance at the fat white rabbit reclining like a drunken burgher against the fireplace fender. “Quinworth demanded that Tye bring Fiona to him, though I did not learn this from Tiberius. Lady Joan explained it to me. She said Tye—Spathfoy agreed to retrieve Fiona in exchange for Quinworth’s willingness to allow her to live in Paris for a year, and to allow all three of your daughters to marry where they chose.”

“Quinworth devised this bargain?”

“He did, and somehow Tye got him to undevise it where Fee is concerned.”

Tye. She’d slipped more than once, using the earl’s name and even his nickname.

“This is interesting, Miss Daniels.” Deirdre took a leisurely sip of her tea, which had lost much of its heat. “I’d heard rumors Gordie had left us an afterthought, and I pleaded with my husband to follow up, but he was adamant it would be a waste of time.”

Waste of time, indeed. The wrath she’d directed at Hale previously was going to be nothing, nothing, compared to the peal she’d ring over his head now.

“I wish you would not be too hard on his lordship, Lady Quinworth. If he has been high-handed in his dealings regarding Fiona, I believe his course was set in part because of the way you have dealt with him.”

Deirdre’s teacup nigh crashed to its saucer. “Explain yourself, Miss Daniels.”

Little Miss Daniels got up and went to the window, turning her back to her hostess. It was a slim back, but straight. Strong. “He keeps all the letters you send back to him—Quinworth does. He has them in a drawer, and they look as if he’s read them time and again.”

Inside her body where she thought she’d long stopped feeling anything of note, Deirdre experienced small tremors of emotion. “What has this to do with me, Miss Daniels?”

“They are love letters, my lady. I read perhaps two sentences of his most recent epistle, and I know a love letter when I’m reading one, though I’ve never received any myself.”

“Love letters? Listing all the things I’ve left behind me in a vain attempt to gain that man’s notice? Those are taunts, Miss Daniels. When you’ve been married to an arrogant, domineering Englishman for thirty years, you’ll know the difference.”

She tried to pick up her teacup, but her grip was too unsteady, and her speech had acquired more than a hint of a burr.

“He’s taken to stealing children in an effort to entice you to return to his side.”

“He has not.”

Miss Daniels turned to face her hostess. “The Earl of Balfour has sent regular reports to Quinworth regarding Fiona’s well-being, my lady. It’s been years, and Quinworth has never acknowledged the child until now. Fiona is legitimate under Scottish law, and she is a wonderful child. Quinworth sent his son to bring her south, and I am convinced this is all in aid of luring you back to the family seat.”

“He never admitted to me we had a grandchild.” Deirdre’s voice, the melodious, cultured voice she’d been complimented on since she’d put up her hair, came out broken and empty. “That man… I told him there had been a child, and he ignored me and railed at me and told me not to hang onto dreams that could never be. We fought and fought until I could not fight anymore.”

“Your husband compromised his relationship with his only remaining son to get his hands on Fiona.” Miss Daniels had moved again to resume her seat across from Deirdre. “He lied, he sacrificed control of his daughters’ futures, he moved heaven and earth to gain custody of Fiona, and I am certain in my bones it was the only way he could bring himself once again to your notice.”

“He has my notice. He has always had my notice. I am tempted to order my traveling coach and take my notice to Quinworth in person this very moment, but I will not pass up the opportunity to spend even a moment with my granddaughter.”

Miss Daniels said nothing. She fixed Deirdre a fresh cup of tea, as if that would help with the mess Deirdre’s marriage had become. As if anything would help.

When Deirdre began to cry, Miss Daniels took the place beside her, tucked a serviette into Deirdre’s hand, and put her arm around Deirdre’s shoulder.

All of which only made the marchioness cry harder.

“She’s not coming.” Quinworth spoke quietly, though there was nobody to hear him who’d repeat his words. “The child left more than two weeks ago—the child who might have finally lured your mother home—and still, there is no word from Edinburgh. Not a scathing letter, not a request for a formal separation, nothing.”

He swatted at the grass with his riding crop. “Each day, my boy, I envy you your repose a little more. Your mother would say I’m being petulant and dramatic.”

Quinworth eyed the headstone to which he addressed himself. “I’m being pathetic, but when you are all the family left to me, at least I can indulge myself privately in this regard.” The alternatives did not bear thinking about. Her ladyship was probably halfway to Vienna by now, and if fetching her home from Edinburgh had been a daunting prospect, the Continent was a patent impossibility.

“Your brother has gone off to the north again, though whether he’ll sort matters out with the little blond, or take up the latest family tradition of solitudinous brooding remains to be seen. You used to be able to jolly him out of his seriousness at least occasionally, but then, you did not lie to him about a material matter.”

The child had been good for Spathfoy, though. About that much, Quinworth was certain. The child and the little blond.

“Fiona has your chin, your eyes. You would love her—anybody would love her.” Which wasn’t something he’d bargained for, not at all.

“Hale.”

Quinworth blinked, wondering if he was finally to be granted the mercy of losing his reason. He was even hearing his wife’s voice on the slight summer breeze, a voice that had been silent except in his memory for two years.

Quinworth did not put any stock in summer breezes.

“I miss your mother,” he went on. “I miss her until I am ready to crawl on my knees to beg her forgiveness, but she won’t… she will not acknowledge my letters. She will not see me; she will not hear me; she will not speak to me. To her, I am as dead as you are, perhaps even more so. I fear her sentence in this regard to be irrevocable.”

The wrought iron gate creaked, a distinctive, rusty protest that was no part of Quinworth’s imagination. A curious shiver skipped down his spine and settled low in his belly.

“Hale, why are you sitting here all alone on the grass?”

Angels might have such a pretty, gentle voice. He closed his eyes and felt a hand pass softly over the back of his head. The scent of roses came to him.

“Hale, please say something.”

His marchioness, his beautiful, passionate lady sounded sad and frightened. When he opened his eyes, she folded down from her majestic height to sit right there beside him on the grass.

“Dee Dee.” He did not dare touch her, though with his eyes he devoured her. She would always be lovely, but two years had made her dignity and self-possession a luminous complement to her beauty. “You came.”

Her gaze was solemn as she took a visual inventory of him. “Tiberius told me to have done with things, one way or another. He said he gave you the same speech.”

Quinworth could not stop looking at her for fear if he blinked she’d disappear. “Spathfoy had many choice sentiments to impart to me, in which the words happiness, compassion, forgiveness, and honesty figured prominently. The boy—the man—was not wrong.”

She rustled around to organize her skirts, sending another little whiff of roses into the air. “He lectured me about love and everybody erring occasionally, often with the best of intentions. The Lords will have a fine orator in him one day.”

And then silence, which had so often presaged verbal gunfire between them. “Dee Dee, have you come to ask for terms?”

He forced himself to put the question calmly, and she stopped fussing her skirts to stare at him. She’d more than hinted over the years that a formal separation would be appreciated.

“Yes, Hale.” Her voice was not so gentle now. “Yes, I have come to treat with you regarding our future. Why did you keep that child a secret?”

This was… good. This was a chance to explain, a chance to preserve the hope that whatever the legal posture of their marriage became, they might be civil with each other, cordial even.

Provided he was honest now.

“When Gordie died, you went to pieces, Dee Dee. You grew quiet—you, who roar and laugh and bellow your way through life. I could not bear it.”

“I went to pieces? Did I limit my sustenance to hard liquor and my company to the hounds and hunters? Spathfoy says your drinking has moderated, but your horses still see more of you than your own daughters do. You became a stranger to me, Hale.” She looked away, giving him a fine view of her profile. “You no longer came to my bed, and when I came to yours, you were a stranger still.”

He heard in her voice not accusation—which might have permitted him a few words in his defense—but hurt.

“Dee Dee, sometimes a man can’t—”

“For God’s sake, Hale, we’re not children. Sometimes I couldn’t either. I hope you recall that much of our marriage.”

“It’s different for a lady, my dear.” And he stopped himself from pursuing this digression further, even in his own defense. “To answer your question, I did not learn of the child until the present earl took over the management of the estate, which was almost a year after…”

She swung her gaze back to him, concern in her eyes—and chagrin. “After our son died. I had to practice saying it, had to learn how to make the words audible while thinking of something else, of anything else.”

Before Quinworth’s eyes, she hunched in on herself. “I call him ‘our son.’ I do not speak his name in the same sentence as I mention his death.”

To see her so afflicted was… unbearable, and yet in a curious way, a relief too. He used one finger to tip her chin up, then dropped his hand and spoke very slowly. “I did not learn of the child’s existence until almost a year after… Gordie… died.”

While he watched, her gorgeous green eyes filled. She blinked furiously then dashed her knuckles against her cheeks. “Go on.”

“Dora was battling cholera, and you were a wraith, my dear. I feared to lose you and her both, more than I’d lost you already. Balfour sent only a short letter, saying the child thrived, and condoling me on the loss of my son. I burned the letter, and forgive me, Wife, I almost hoped the child would die. Why should some scheming Scottish girl get to keep a part of Gordie, when I was left with nothing but guilt, regret, and a family unable to put itself to rights?”

She did not fly into a rage; she did not start on one of her scathing lectures in the low, relentless tones of a woman intent on delivering thirty-nine verbal lashes.

Quinworth’s wife spoke softly. “You were a good father, Hale. You knew when to set limits and when to wink. You have only to look at Spathfoy to see how Gordie would have turned out, given time.”

“Dee Dee, how can you say this? I arranged for Gordie to have his colors, knowing full well military life was not going to bring out his best traits. The drinking and wenching and travel…”

She cocked her head as his words trailed off. “Why did you do it, Hale? I’ve often wondered.”

And now he could not look her in the eye. “I’ve wondered myself, and often wished I hadn’t, but I’ve had years to consider it, and all I can come up with is: I did not know what else to do for him. In his brother’s shadow, he was bored and becoming…”

“Troubled.” She finished the thought for him, and to his consternation, reached out to lace her fingers through his. “Gordie might have stood for a pocket borough in a few years, but not right out of university. I thought a few years of service might give him the maturity Tye seemed born with.”

“You thought?”

“I encouraged him to ask you to arrange his commission. I never foresaw him getting into trouble in Scotland and taking a transfer to Canada in disgrace.”

“And I did not want you to know.” He studied their joined hands. “He compromised the girl, Dee Dee. I learned this when the child was a little older, and I could not see how to tell you of our granddaughter without also admitting Gordie had behaved dishonorably toward the mother.”

“So you told me nothing at all.”

She wasn’t wrong. He could let matters stand and be grateful they’d been able to clear the air this much.

But he’d missed his wife, missed his best friend, the mother of his children, the woman who’d seen him drunk, ranting, and insensate with what he now realized was loss and guilt. “I cannot undo the harm I’ve done, Dee Dee, but I have never stopped loving you. That is all I’ve wanted to tell you for more years than I can count. I am sorry for the decisions I’ve made, sorry I could not be the husband you needed and deserved. The fault for what has become of our marriage lies with me, and I sincerely regret—” His voice caught. Her grip on his hand had become painful, but he managed a few more words. “I regret the situation we find ourselves in and would do anything to make reparation to you for it.”

He raised her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles.

He’d been honest. At last he’d been honest with his wife, and while there was no joy in it, there was peace. For long moments, Quinworth sat with his marchioness, side by side in the grass. A robin landed on Gordie’s headstone, then flitted away as if nothing within view could be of interest.

“I was so angry.” Her ladyship spoke quietly, worlds of sadness in her words, but she did not retrieve her hand from his. “I was angry with Gordie for dying, angry with myself for living. Angry with you for not being able to understand what I did not understand myself. You always used to talk to me, Hale. I love that about you. I loved just to hear your voice.”

She had used the past tense—she loved just to hear his voice—but she’d also used the present: I love that about you.

Quinworth remained still and quiet, her hand held in his.

“I’ve realized something, Husband. I’ve realized the anger was a way to stay connected with Gordie, and to pretend I wasn’t the mother who sent him off to wheedle his colors from you. I pretended I wasn’t the useless twit wishing him into some regiment so he wouldn’t be causing a scandal when his sisters made their bows. I became very good at pretending.” She frowned at the headstone. “But not good enough. All the anger in the world does not make the grief go away.”

“No,” Quinworth said, kissing her knuckles again. “It does not. Drinking, shouting, and galloping hell-bent across the countryside don’t either.”

Her ladyship withdrew her hand. “Tiberius says you are a man in love and must be forgiven much, and he recognizes the symptoms because they’ve befallen him.”

“Spathfoy has a certain pragmatic wisdom about him. He’ll make a fine marquess.”

She smiled at him faintly, a wifely curving of the lips that had something to do with forbearance. “He makes a fine son, and I have made a very sorry wife. This is what I want to say to you, Hale Flynn: When you needed me most, when you were, for the first time in our marriage, not indulgent, doting, and unrelentingly kind to me, I failed you. When our son…” She stopped and bowed her head, speaking very softly. “When Gordie…”

Her shoulders jerked, and Quinworth’s throat closed up to see her so tormented.

“Dee Dee, please don’t.” He shifted to tuck an arm around her shoulders, willing her to silence. She took a steadying breath, and he felt her gathering her great reserves of courage.

“When… Gordie… died, I failed you.” She pitched into him, lashing her arms around him and sobbing quietly against his shoulder. “Forgive me, Hale, for I failed you terribly.”

While the summer breeze wafted the scent of roses around him, Hale Flynn held his dear wife in his arms and wept. He wept for their departed son, for the years wasted, for the hurt his spouse had suffered and suffered still, but mostly he wept in gratitude for the simple comfort of having her restored to his embrace.

Ian MacGregor kept his voice down, because His Wee Bairnship had for once taken his nap at a time convenient to his parents’ plans—some of those plans, in any case.

“All they need is a nudge, Ian.” Augusta smoothed a hand over the child’s sleeping form, which had Ian nigh twitching with the need to stop her. Anything, anything at all, was sufficient provocation for the baby to waken and start bellowing, and God knew how Ian was supposed to handle matters without his countess to direct him.

“Spathfoy is cooling his heels in the library with a dram of the laird’s cache, Wife. Come away with me.” Ian escorted his wife into the corridor and closed the nursery door very, very softly. “Is Hester lingering over her tea?”

“She’s tarrying in the garden, last I checked. I thought I’d steal a peek at the baby before I wish her on her way.”

“You thought you’d dodge out on me.” Ian took her by the hand and led her to the steps. “There’s a sound and lengthy scold in it for you if you desert the cause at this point, woman.”

“A lengthy scold?” She stopped and bestowed a wicked smile on him. “Marriage to you is growing on me, Ian.”

He could not help glancing at her flat middle, where he suspected another aspect of her fondness for marriage was having repercussions. “We’ll see how matters unfold with our guests. Spathfoy will not appreciate our meddling.”

“Yes, he will. So will Hester.”

She kissed him, which was no reassurance, none whatsoever. Ian parted company with her on the first floor and went to do business with an errant earl whose wanderings had once again taken him into the Scottish Highlands.

“Spathfoy, I do beg your pardon. The lad will fret, and then the wife will fret, and then a man needs a tot lest he fret as well.”

Ian’s guest shot him a curious look. “You take quite an interest in what transpires in your nursery, Balfour.”

“A wise man usually does.” Ian topped off Spathfoy’s drink, poured one for himself, and faced Spathfoy. “Hester tells me your brother’s will did indeed state that Fiona is to be in the care of her paternal family, but Gordie specified that you, and not Quinworth, were to be her guardian. I asked you to come here so we might settle the business like gentlemen—unless you’d rather take it up in the courts?”

Spathfoy had apparently given up declaiming the eternal verities in Her Majesty’s English in favor of awkward silences.

When Ian made no effort to leap into the conversational breach, Spathfoy eventually deigned to speak. “And how does Miss Daniels fare?”

As the closest thing Hester had to a head of her family, Ian allowed Spathfoy’s question was the right one to ask. Fee’s situation was not urgent. Ian had concluded that much when, two weeks after the child had returned home, no lawsuits had been filed, and no demands for settlement or surrender of the child had been received.

“Hester is coping.”

Spathfoy peered at the best damned whisky Ian would ever be privileged to serve, but took not a taste. “What the bloody hell does that mean?”

“Hester’s in the garden, Spathfoy. I was supposed to use all manner of subterfuge to lure you there, as I’m sure my countess has employed with Hester, but it’s clear to me I’ll get nowhere negotiating with you until you’ve been put out of your misery.”

Spathfoy set his drink aside. “It’s that obvious?”

“For God’s sake, man. You’re pathetic. You can barely hold a conversation, you’re moony-eyed in the broad light of day, and you’ve not been keeping in good pasture, from the looks of you. You’re an affront to single manhood, a disgrace to the gender, and worse than all of that, you’re wasting some of the best potation ever brewed in Scotland.”

“Suppose I am.” He tossed the drink back in a single swallow. “Fiona stays here, unless she wants to come terrorize the bachelors of Edinburgh when she’s older. Assuming my parents have found their common sense, my mother will be happy to sponsor her.”

“As will my countess.”

“We understand each other.”

“We do.” Ian stuck out a hand and clapped Spathfoy on the shoulder. “Now quit prevaricating, laddie. Faint heart never won fair maid, and my son is likely to wake up at any minute.”

“You’ll be watching, I take it?”

“Somebody might have to drag you off the field if you bugger this up as badly as the English bugger up most of what counts in life.”

Spathfoy smiled the smile of a hopelessly smitten man. “Half English, but also half Scottish.”

“Then we’ve a wee glimmer of hope.” Ian spun him by the shoulders and shoved him toward the door.

A rose garden past its peak was a sad place to spend a summer afternoon, but Hester hadn’t wanted to accompany Augusta up to the nursery, and the stables had to at least throw a saddle on a horse before a lady could safely ride home.

Tea had been awful, full of knowing silences on Augusta’s part, and sidelong glances that alternated between sympathetic and speculative, while Hester stared at the carpet or out the window and tried to make conversation. If Aunt Ree hadn’t forced her to accept Augusta’s invitation—her summons—Hester would still be sitting by the burn, losing games of matches to Fee.

In a few short weeks, Hester had learned the difference between a bad judgment—such as allowing Jasper Merriman liberties—and a terrible judgment, such as flinging Tiberius Flynn’s proposal back in his face. She hadn’t made him a proper apology, and that rankled almost as much as the relentless pain of his absence from her life.

“I wasn’t sure you’d still be here.”

The pleasurable shock of hearing Tiberius Flynn’s voice was quickly doused in the reality of seeing him standing on the garden path, looking mouthwateringly handsome and well turned out in his riding attire.

“Tiberius.” She wanted to rise, to go to him, but dared not. She wanted to speak but couldn’t find the words.

“May I sit?”

She twitched her skirts aside in answer. “You’re here.” A stupid thing to say—an imbecilic thing to say.

“Your cousin and her earl have connived for it to be so. I cannot regret their scheming. Hester, are you well?”

What was he asking? She did not meet his gaze but hunched forward, the better to hide her blush. “I am in good health. You?” He looked thinner in the face to her.

“I am…” He trailed off, and Hester could feel him taking in her features one by one. Tired eyes, hair not quite as neatly braided as it should have been, fingernails a trifle ragged. “I am going to be honest, Hester Daniels, for the rest of my life, with you, with all of those who matter, I am going to honest.”

She said nothing. This sounded like the introduction to a painful admission, though—painful for her. For the pleasure of hearing him speak, she’d bear it. Somehow, she would bear it.

“I am unhappy… no, I am miserable. Abjectly, profoundly, unendingly miserable. I have transgressed before a woman who deserved honesty and more from me, and now my life stretches out, decades of meaningless time… I am making a hash of this.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face, and Hester dared a glance at him.

“Whatever it is, Tiberius, I promise I will listen.”

His expression was solemn, grave even. He had never looked more dear to her, or more distant. “Do you carry our child, Hester?”

“That is of no moment.” Oh, how she wanted to shoot off the bench and hide in the stables. How she wanted to throw herself into his arms. “If you are here to propose marriage again, I will not have you trapped. I know what it is to be trapped, to feel as if duty and honor leave one no reasonable options.”

He sighed—perhaps a sigh of relief, maybe of frustration.

“What of love, Hester? Amo, amas, amat? You recall the word.”

“Please, Tiberius, no Latin now.” But her heart had picked up the rhythm of his conjugation: I love, you love, he loves, we love, you love, they love… A steady, anxious tattoo that wanted desperately to hear what he’d say.

He moved, and the loss of even his proximity threatened to choke her. “Don’t—” She reached out a hand to stay him, when he slid to his knees before her.

“My great, impressive vocabulary fails me, Hester Daniels. My wits fail me; my reason fails me. I only know that I have met the love of my life, a woman who can help me to face life’s hurts and wrongs with courage, a woman in whose love and trust I can repose my entire heart, if she—if you—will have me.”

“This is not—” She was supposed to tell him this was not necessary, this dramatic offer, but she saw that for the man she loved, when he was looking for a way to redeem what he believed to be his compromised honor, this was necessary.

And when she had promised to listen, he’d given her back her own words.

“Tiberius, I understand that you had no choice, that the people you love were in terrible, terrible difficulties.”

“I am in terrible difficulties.” He looked like he’d say more, but then bowed his head. “I love you, Hester Daniels. When I think of you, I want children for us to love too. Swarms of them, all with red hair, to sing to the trees and scare the fish and cheat at cards with their uncles.”

He fell silent while the images he spun took root in Hester’s mind and in her heart. She wanted him to go on, to give her more lovely words, more dreams built with his sonorous tones, but he folded forward, sliding his arms around her waist.

“Please, Hester.” A simple word. A beautiful, honest, heartfelt word rendered profound by the hoarse plea in his voice.

A single word that banished her misgivings, her self-doubt, her fear.

“Please. Please will you marry me, will you be the mother of my children? I’ve already told Quinworth he can keep his damned title, and I think he and my mother have finally set each other to rights. We’ll bide here in Scotland. Just… please, marry me.”

She grasped his hands, feeling as if every good, blessed thing in creation had been given to her with his words. “Yes, Tiberius. Yes, I will marry you. We’ll bide in Scotland, and we’ll have swarms of children, and they’ll have red hair, and we’ll love them all, each and every one of them, and we’ll love each other, for I do love you, so very much.”

He said nothing, not one word, but when she kissed him to solemnize her promises, she felt his body and his heart and every fiber of his being resonating with agreement.

And as it turned out, Hester was right: they married; they bided in Scotland; they had swarms of red-haired children—the first showing up something less than nine months after the wedding. That one was joined shortly by others who sang to trees, scared every fish in the burn, and cheated at cards when playing with their uncles and with their many, many, many cousins.