“I will pass your message along.”
Hester rose without finishing her tea and made her way to the library, blind to the Quinworth wealth arrayed around her.
Tye had fetched Fiona here to rescue his sisters from the kind of match his parents had made into a living purgatory. This was the leverage his father had over him: three women could look forward to happy adulthoods, provided Fiona was sacrificed to a childhood away from those who loved her.
Hester pushed the library door open, lost in thought.
And Tye had said he honestly believed he’d be improving Fiona’s circumstances, plucking her from penury into a life of guaranteed privilege.
Merciful Saints. That a father would put his son up to such an undertaking was an abomination against the natural order, but again, Hester had to wonder what motivated the marquess.
She did not wander the bookshelves as she had on many occasions. She instead sat at the huge old estate desk by the windows and tried to wrap her mind around the choices Tiberius had faced. Outside the windows, a lovely day was unfolding, full of sunshine and fresh breezes. Inside the library, Hester rummaged for writing implements, intent on sharing the morning’s revelations with Aunt Ariadne, and Ian and Augusta MacGregor as well.
Pen and ink were not difficult to find, but the nib needed trimming, so Hester opened more drawers in search of a penknife, sand, and wax.
She found… documents. A large cache of letters addressed to Deirdre, Lady Quinworth, in a slashing hand that looked very like what she’d seen of Tiberius’s writing.
Why would the lady have left her letters here if she dwelled in Scotland?
Tamping down the clamorings of conscience, Hester opened one letter:
My dearest wife,
The Holland bulbs you planted on the tenth anniversary of Dora’s birth are springing up in profusions and glories, carpeting the hedges in bright colors and sweet aromas. Were you here, I would walk the paths with you. You would tell me which beds need to be divided and which might be left undisturbed for another year. Were you here, we might ride to the river and picnic there among the willows, while I read to you from the wicked French novels you used to hide under our pillows…
God in heaven. Hester folded the letter up with shaking hands. The love letter. She dared not read further, but glanced at the date and found to her shock it was but a few weeks ago.
And this was not a draft. The missive had been through the mails, apparently twice.
“The poor man.” And the drawer was nearly full of such letters. What wrong had he done his lady to merit this treatment? No chance to explain, no chance to make reparation, no hope of forgiveness? She closed that drawer so quickly she nearly pinched her fingers, then opened another.
Still no penknife, but a single, very official-looking document. Her planned correspondence forgotten, Hester started reading.
Thirty minutes later, she was still staring at the Last Will and Testament of Gordon Bierly Adolphus Flynn when the marquess came striding into the room, tapping his riding crop against his boot.
“Miss Daniels. Good day. Spathfoy tells me you might soon be returning to northern climes.” He advanced on the desk, his expression curious. “I’d rather hoped you’d bring the boy up to scratch and do something about that moping child while you were about it. I know not who is the more cast down of late, the man or the girl.”
“I wonder you’d notice such a thing, my lord, while pining for your own lady.”
“I beg your pardon?” He gave his boots a sharp thwack with his infernal crop. That was nothing compared to what Hester would do to him.
She pushed out of the chair and came around the desk to stand directly before Quinworth. “I’ve read Gordie’s will, your lordship. I am certain Tiberius has not been given that privilege.”
“You pried into the private papers of a family who opened their home to you as a guest?” He did not yell; he kept his voice menacingly soft.
“I went looking for a penknife and found some answers, you dratted bully. How could you do this to Tiberius, to Fiona, and to her family? You lied, you manipulated, you misrepresented, you abused the trust of those around you, and the trust placed in you by a son dead and gone and unable to speak for his own wishes.”
“I’m seeing those wishes carried out, Miss Daniels, and I will not be made to answer to the likes of some poor Scottish relation who thinks the hand of the Quinworth heir beneath her. Leave any time you like. I’ll manage my granddaughter and my son without your further interference. Good day.”
He strode out of the room, boots thumping, crop thwacking, making Hester want to call him back so she could tear another strip off of him.
Many, many strips. What he’d done was an unimaginable transgression of the good faith family members owed one another, and Hester dreaded to think of the hurt Tiberius would suffer when he learned of it.
If he learned of it. Hester forced herself to spend long, long minutes pacing the library and thinking through the ramifications of what she’d read. She should not be the one to tell Tiberius what his father had done. She’d take Fiona home, and that would be the end of it. Based on what she’d learned of the marquess—and of the pertinent legalities—this sojourn in the south was over: for her, and for Fiona.
There was no need to write to Aunt Ree or Ian. Hester would have Fiona home before the letters arrived, leaving Tiberius Flynn the rest of his days to be a good son to a miserable father, a protective brother to three adult sisters, and a dutiful son to a mother who would be otherwise homeless.
The library door banged open, and Joan appeared, hectic color in her pale cheeks. “Hester, you must come! Fiona’s down at the stables, and Papa is yelling at her, and there’s a fox—”
“I’m coming.” Fiona would not deal well with an upset, ill-humored marquess, and the marquess would not deal with an exhibition of Fiona’s stubbornness and homesickness now.
But when she got to the stables, what Hester found was worse—far worse—than simple upset or stubbornness.
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.
&n
bsp; “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 establi
sh 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.
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