“If you please, Aunt Ariadne, what else can you tell me about Lord Spathfoy’s family?”
***
The shame had caught Hester quite by surprise, as if she’d risen from a chair to stride across the room, only to find her hem caught under some malefactor’s boot.
She’d ridden over several miles of countryside with Spathfoy in silence, pondering his kiss—and her kiss—and feeling for the first time as if ending her engagement might have been among the better decisions she’d made.
Feeling a stirring of that most irksome of emotions: hope; but it was a hope so amorphous as to leave her wondering if Spathfoy himself had anything to do with it, or if a kiss from any handsome gentleman might have served.
No matter what she’d said to Ian, it wasn’t as if she liked Spathfoy, after all.
But then they’d trotted into the stable yard, and Spathfoy had swung off his horse and turned to assist Hester to dismount. His expression had been so severe she’d nearly scrambled off the far side of her horse. He’d deposited her on the ground as if touching her had burned his hands, bowed shortly, and stalked off toward the house without a word.
Leaving Hester to doubt herself so badly, she was making confessions to Aunt Ree and butchering a language normally more pleasing to the ear than French.
“But are there rules, Aunt? If a gentleman kisses a lady, is it still forbidden for the lady to kiss the gentleman?”
“Oh, my heavens, child. If a gentleman kisses a lady, he is unquestionably opening the negotiations. He’s hoping she’ll kiss him back.”
Spathfoy had not looked the least bit hopeful.
Hester was saved from explaining as much by Fiona’s arrival. The child skipped into the parlor and plopped down beside Aunt Ree on the sofa.
“Uncle Tye is writing letters. He wouldn’t give me any big words in French, though he was happy enough to give me some in English.”
Aunt Ree smoothed a hand down the remains of one of Fiona’s braids. “We’re practicing our Gaelic, Fiona. We can look up the big English words in the French translation dictionary if that would help.”
Inspiration struck, and Hester didn’t pause to question it. “Maybe Uncle Tye will help you think up some big French words over dinner.”
Fiona sat bolt upright. “I can come to table with Uncle and Aunt and you? I can stay up late and have dessert?”
“If you take a bath and change your pinny, yes, just this once.”
Fiona bounced to her feet. “I must put this in my letter. I’m to dine with company. Mama and Papa will be very proud of me.” She skipped off to the door, stopped, and frowned. “Will Uncle mind if I join you for dinner?”
Aunt Ariadne answered. “Of course, he won’t. What gentleman wouldn’t want to have three lovely ladies all to himself at dinner?”
***
Tye had friends who’d served in the Crimea, men who’d gone off to war in great patriotic good spirits only to come home quiet, hollowed-eyed, and often missing body parts. The Russians had developed a type of weapon referred to as a fougasse, though various forms of fougasse had been around for centuries.
A man walking through deep grass would inadvertently step on one of these things and find himself blown to bits without warning.
Dinner loomed before Tye like a field salted with many hidden weapons, each intended to relieve him of some significant asset: his dignity, his composure, his manners, or—in Fiona’s case—his patience.
“I’ve made you a list,” he said. “Not less than ten of the largest words I know in French, and you shall have it after we dine. Now, might we converse about the weather?”
Lady Ariadne presided over the meal with benevolent vagueness. Miss Daniels—he could hardly call her Hester now—limited her contributions to gentle admonitions regarding the child’s deportment, leaving Tye to converse with… his niece.
“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 h
e 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?”
&nbs
p; 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.
Grace Burrowes - [MacGregor 02] Page 10