Grace Burrowes - [MacGregor 02]

by Once Upon a Tartan

  He was silent for a moment, while a fat bee assayed the roses one by one. “I have Gordie’s old journals. Someday, Fiona might want to read them.”

  This was a purely selfless thought, one that confirmed Spathfoy was by no means as cool and indifferent to others as his English diction and uncompromising nose might suggest. Hester slipped off her glove, and between them, linked her fingers with his.

  “You were good to give Fee those stories. No one else could have done that. They’re the kind of stories my sister will have to tell on me. My parents don’t know those stories, Matthew doesn’t know them.”

  “I felt a little guilty for bringing them up.” He did not take his hand from hers, but his gaze was fixed on the distant purple hills and the tall crags beyond them.

  “Guilty because you’d forgotten them?”

  He gave her an odd look. “That too.” They remained thus, hands linked in a peculiar sort of quiet, until Hester felt a raindrop hit her cheek. Spathfoy dropped his coat around her shoulders and very properly escorted her into the house.

  ***

  Tye was limited to writing letters, because the staff at the telegraph office in Ballater was unlikely to keep the contents of any wires confidential.

  And because he was so easily distracted by the sound of Fiona’s little feet thumping down the corridors, or the slow tattoo of Lady Ariadne’s cane, he was limited to writing his letters late at night when the house had finally gone quiet—though even the quiet was a maddening kind of distraction.

  Riding with Fiona had been intended to foster the child’s trust, to tantalize her with the pleasures she craved most, and it had likely achieved those ends. It had achieved other ends as well, inconvenient, complicated ends, like making Tye aware of Fiona not as a pawn in the ongoing chess match with his father, but as a child who missed her mother.

  Tye’s sisters missed their mother.

  Hell, he missed his mother.

  Fiona’s shameless craving to know more of her father reminded Tye that he was also a man who missed his brother, flawed though the adult fraternal relationship had been. He rose from his desk and went to the window, where a full moon was casting the gardens in silvery shadows. A drink was in order, a nightcap.

  Several nightcaps.

  He passed through the darkened house quietly, but had to pause at the head of the stairs. A sound disturbed the peace of the old house, a sound from within the walls. He followed that sound into the family wing, pausing outside a closed door.

  Lady Ariadne slept downstairs, Miss Hester slept in the guest wing. He tapped on the door. “Child, open this door.”

  If anything, the weeping became more distinct. Tye pushed the door open and entered Fiona’s room. She should have been housed on the higher floor, near if not adjoined to the nursery, though with Lady Ariadne downstairs and Miss Daniels on the opposite side of the house, the family wing was almost as isolated as the nursery.

  “Fiona, are you hurt?”

  “Yes.” She hoo-hoo-hoo’d into her pillow, making Tye regret the impulse that brought him here.

  “Is it your foot again?” Stupid question, but he’d ask her a hundred questions to stop her damned racket.

  “It’s not my f-foot. I want my mama.”

  She threw herself over on her side and sobbed afresh into her pillow. “I want my m-mama, and my papa, and they’re gone, and I don’t even know where Berlin or those other places are!”

  “For God’s sake…” He took a seat on the bed. “See here, child. This won’t help.”

  God help him, he sounded like his father. More than ever.

  “Go away. You’re mean, and I don’t have to listen to you.”

  Back to that. Tentatively, he reached out a hand and tugged one ratty red braid free from where it was creased along her neck. “Sending me away won’t make your parents come home sooner.”

  She lifted her head off the pillow far enough glare at him in the moonlight. “I know that, but I miss them. They hardly ever write, and I’m stuck here. Uncle Ian and Aunt Augusta never come visit because of that stupid, stinky baby, and they’re supposed to help look after me.”

  “Well, I’ve come to look after you. Move over.”

  Fiona moved about two inches left. The little bed creaked under his weight as Tye shifted to lean back against the headboard.

  He got out his handkerchief. “I went to public school when I was about your age, you know.”

  “Is that where you learned to talk like the Wrath of God?”

  She allowed him to wipe the tears from her face, then caught his hand and held the handkerchief to her nose while she honked.

  “I do not speak like the Wrath of God.” He folded the handkerchief and set it aside. “One doesn’t dare cry in public school. All the fellows will make his life miserable if he does.”

  They made the first formers’ lives miserable in any case.

  She stirred around in her blankets until, after a sharp little elbow had dug into his ribs, she was budged against Tye’s side. “But you got to go and see things, you got to do more than collect eggs and ramble to the burn, and wait for your uncles to come visit.”

  “I got to memorize more useless Latin than most children know English. I got my eyes blacked by the older boys. I was punished for things they did, and I missed my bro—”

  “You missed my papa. I miss him too.”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to say that she couldn’t possibly miss a man she’d never met, but Tye was beginning to get the knack of being not just an uncle, but her uncle.

  “It’s all right to miss him, Fiona. He would have loved to have known you.”

  “Mama says he was handsome.”

  This observation held a plea.

  “He was damned good looking, and you are not to tattle on me for swearing. I’m stating a simple truth.”

  “Uncle Ian says it’s not swearing to call them the damned English or the damned taxes. What did my father look like?”

  The same queer feeling he’d experienced out riding with her washed over him again. He knew what his father looked like. He knew what Quinworth sounded like, knew the scent of his cigars, the way he studied his wineglass while the blessing was said over the evening meal.

  Fiona knew none of these things regarding her progenitor, and that was arguably Tye’s fault.

  “I have a picture of him with me. I’ll show it to you in the morning.”

  She bolted to a sitting position. “You have a painting of my papa? I want to see it now. I’ve never seen a picture of him. Does he look like me?”

  She was scrambling across Tye as she spoke, digging knees into his shins and bringing to mind more swearing.

  “It’s the middle of the night, child. This can wait until morning.”

  “He’s my papa. I want to see him now.”

  She stood there in her nightgown, a thick red braid coming undone over each shoulder, impending hysterics framing every line of her form. Her lips trembled with it, her shoulders quivered, and her tightly clenched little fists promised a great, noisy outburst in the very next instant.

  “Come along then.” He rose off the bed and took her by the hand. “And don’t be complaining to me if you catch your very death, running about at all hours without your slippers.”

  “My slippers are under the bed.” She wrenched free of his grasp, darted forth, and held them up.

  “Give those to me.” He snatched them from her and knelt to put them on her feet. “You will return to bed when I’ve shown you the portrait, do you understand?”

  “Yes, Uncle Tye.” She seized his hand and dragged him toward the door. “I’ll go right to bed, and I won’t bother you again tonight. I won’t bother anybody. In the morning, may I see the picture again?”

  She didn’t require an answer. The entire length of the house, sh
e blathered on about her good-looking, handsome papa, who was a brave soldier for Her Majesty and danced so very wonderfully at the regimental ball that Mama let him kiss her, and then they got married.

  Kiss, indeed. But at least Fiona’s mother hadn’t burdened the child with less attractive truths—not yet.

  Quinworth might not be so careful of the child’s sensibilities regarding his view of her mother. Tye paused outside his door and looked down at Fiona where she smiled up at him. Trust shone out of her eyes, trust and hope and all manner of things that had Tye dropping her hand and pushing the door open.

  “The portrait is in my traveling satchel. Are your hands clean?”

  “I took my bath. Aunt Hester would skin me alive if I got my sheets dirty because I skipped my bath.”

  Aunt Hester would pat the girl on the head and murmur the mildest reproach. Tye rummaged in his bag and withdrew three small framed pictures. He passed the first one to her. “That’s your papa.”

  She snatched it up and brought it to her face. “Why isn’t he smiling?”

  “His eyes are smiling, but to have a photograph made, one must sit still for a very long time, and facial expressions are discouraged as a result.”

  “You can’t move at all?”

  “If you do, it makes the image blurry. I think you can see a resemblance between you and your papa, around the chin and jaw.”

  She padded over to his dressing stand and peered at herself in the mirror, then back at the image of her father. “He is handsome. Mama wasn’t saying that just to be nice.”

  Which suggested the girl suspected her mother had been diplomatic in some other regards. “I have two other pictures you might want to see.” He hadn’t planned to show these to her, but the moment seemed convenient.

  “Is it a picture of you? I’d like a picture of you.” She kept her father’s portrait in her hand and came back to Tye’s side.

  “These are your paternal aunts. That’s Dora, Mary Ellen, and Joan. Joan has red hair like you.”

  “I like Joan. She looks like you.”

  “She’s quite tall, too, and loves to be out-of-doors. She likes painting and designing dresses, of all things.”

  She shot him a curious look. “Do you paint?”

  “Not like she can. These are my parents, which makes them your grandparents.” It was the most flattering image Tye had of his father, either photographic or hand drawn. His lordship was standing with one hand on his seated wife’s shoulder. Their expressions showed a rare, congenial moment between them. Mama had insisted on being seated, lest her height be unnecessarily obvious, and his lordship had indulged her.

  For once.

  Fiona studied the image with the intensity she did everything else. “My grandda looks like you too. Grandmama is very pretty, but not as old as Aunt Ariadne.”

  “Not nearly.” The older Tye got, the more aware he became that his mother was only eighteen years his senior.

  He didn’t want to take the picture out of Fiona’s hand, but neither did he want her up half the night staring at it. “You may borrow the portrait of your father for the night. Do not put it under your pillow, or you’ll break the glass framing it.”

  “I can keep it?”

  “You may borrow it.”

  She hunched up her shoulders and clutched the small picture to her skinny chest, her face suffused with joy. “I won’t break it, Uncle Tye. Not ever.”

  He was about to point out to her that a loan until morning would afford no opportunities for “not ever,” but he became aware of movement by his open door.

  “Fiona, are you keeping your uncle up past his bedtime?”

  Miss Daniels stood in his doorway, clad in an elegantly embroidered green silk nightgown and wrapper. On her feet, incongruously, were a sturdy pair of gray wool socks, and her hair hung over her right shoulder in a single shiny plait.

  “Aunt, I have seen the very best thing ever. Uncle Tye has a picture of my papa.” Fiona scampered over to her aunt and held out the miniature. She did not give it up to her aunt’s possession even temporarily.

  “My, what a good-looking fellow he was.” Miss Daniels sank to her knees so she and the child could gaze at the good-looking fellow together. “I especially like the merriment in his eyes, as if he knew happy secrets he was just bursting to tell somebody.”

  Tye closed his eyes, trying not to picture his brother’s expression of suppressed glee. Gordie had had charm, about that there was no dispute.

  “I look like him,” Fiona announced. “Uncle Tye said.”

  “Yes, I can see a resemblance. You must thank your uncle for showing you this. It was very considerate of him.”

  “Uncle said I may have it until tomorrow morning.”

  “I believe the term used was borrow, but as morning fast approaches, perhaps I’d better rethink my offer.”

  Fiona turned her body half away from him, the portrait held out of his sight. “It’s hardly even nighttime, and the moon is still up. I’m going to bed now.”

  She shot between the two adults, leaving her aunt kneeling on the floor and a silence where a child had stood a moment before. Tye crossed the room and extended a hand down to Miss Daniels.

  “My apologies if we woke you.”

  She came to her feet gracefully, her small, warm hand in his providing a curious blend of comfort and upset. To see her thus, ready for bed, her hair hanging in a gilded braid, those ugly socks on her feet… Tye’s heart sped up, and the blood began pooling in inconvenient, ungentlemanly locations.

  Which would never do. “May I see you back to your door, Miss Daniels?”

  And still, he did not release her hand.

  ***

  Spathfoy looked tired and a little frazzled, probably from dealing with Fiona on a bad night. Unfortunately for Hester’s composure, the Earl of Spathfoy tired and a little frazzled had a particular appeal.

  As did the Earl of Spathfoy holding forth at breakfast.

  And the Earl of Spathfoy in a contemplative mood under the stars.

  And the Earl of Spathfoy demonstrating casual equestrian mastery over his unruly young horse.

  She went up on her toes and kissed him. He was tall enough that he might have evaded her sally, but instead he stood slightly bent toward her, though very still, as if he wasn’t sure if his brain had heard his mouth aright.

  “I don’t especially like you sometimes,” she said. “Though other times, like when you’re being so kind to Fee, I more than like you. I am coming to realize that liking and attraction do not necessarily go hand in hand.”

  Solemn green eyes blinked at her. “You are determined on more ill-advised behavior.”

  “Not determined, perhaps spontaneously tempted.” She permitted herself to breathe in through her nose, to make an olfactory treat of his clean, floral fragrance. “I came over here to rescue you from Fiona, and now…”

  “Who shall rescue me from you? Has it occurred to you, Miss Daniels, you might need rescuing from me?”

  He was adorable when he tried to bluster. She added that to a growing list of things she had to admit she liked about him. “You would never force a woman.”

  He wouldn’t have to.

  “I might pick one up bodily and carry her back to her own room, then shut her door very firmly, return to my own chambers, and lock my door against her further invasions. My gentlemanly resolve goes only so far, Miss Daniels, and I’ve already told you that placing your trust in me is bound to end in disappointment.”

  He thought disappointment was going to dissuade her?

  “Duly noted, your lordship.” Was all this chatter on his part supposed to make her more determined? For that was the effect it had on her. She cupped his jaw, let the tension of it seep into her fingers. “I did not look for this attraction to you either, but ignoring it doesn’t make it
go away. Wasting it seems unthinkable.”

  “Nothing makes it go away.” He muttered this last a quarter inch from her mouth, so she could feel the way the words shaped his breath and taste the frustration in his voice.

  “Nothing you’ve tried so far, in any case.” Hester put them both out of their respective miseries and pressed her mouth to his. She might have been content to explore him lazily, to let the kiss build as some of their previous kisses had built—slowly, wonderfully, terribly—but his arms came around her, mooring her tightly to his body. He widened his stance and growled as his mouth opened over hers.

  And it was heaven, to be held and kissed by a man who knew exactly what he was about. A man sturdy enough in body and masculinity that Hester could let go of everything—propriety, thought, physical balance—and kiss him back.

  “I love your hair.” She spoke against his neck, which tasted of soap and lavender. “I love your height.”

  “Hush.” He loved her mouth on his, apparently, seeking his kisses and his tongue and every oral detail of him she could lap up. She arched into his embrace, reveling in his height, because it meant she had nearly to climb him to get closer.

  “Miss—Hester, for God’s sake.” He trapped her hands behind her back and rested his forehead against hers. “Do you seek your own ruin?”

  He was breathing heavily. So was she.

  “I am ruined. Merriman has seen to this, but if I’m going to be ruined, I want to know.”

  “One unfortunate encounter does not a lady ruin.”

  She did not point out that by his reasoning, she should be entitled to at least one lapse with him, then. “Jasper has put it about that he was sampling used goods, and eager used goods. I did not understand how any woman could be eager for that… poking business, but with you, I think I could.”

  “You could…?”

  “Be eager. I can’t seem to be anything but eager.”

  “For God’s—” He brought her hands up, kissed each palm, and looped her arms around his neck. “My dear woman, if you were any more eager, I’d be lying on the floor, thoroughly ravished. The male mind boggles to consider such a thing.”