She passed the note back to him without a word. She agreed.
He knelt and put it behind the first. Then he patted the earth. “Sleep well, my bairnie. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you or your mother.”
Viola was very glad his back was turned to her, because if she’d had to see his expression, she was positive she would cry outright.
But when he faced her, his eyes were clear. “We didn’t name him. We’d discussed some names, but Annie said she’d rather decide what to name him when we met him. I’ve only ever called him little nonsense names like that. Bairn, wean.” Smiling ruefully, he said, “Constance was called after Annie’s grandmother. That was a far easier name in some respects.”
She paused, thinking. “Would you like to?”
“Do you think it wicked that we didn’t?” The question was intimate, spoken in a small voice, as though Duncan were unlocking the words to say as he said them.
“No.”
“I wonder, sometimes, if I should have. Even by myself, alone, and after the fact.”
Viola’s eyes followed two magpies that strayed across the grass. Joy was on the horizon, she thought, she had only to grasp it. “Even if you didn’t, I think he knows.”
“His name?” Duncan was quizzical.
“No, he knows that you love him. That he’s your bairnie.”
Despite the serious subject, she had to smile as she tried to use the word. It would never sound the same when she did, though growing up with Papa meant she knew what it meant and how it should sound. More fluid than her tongue could present it, unless she practiced. Not even then, possibly.
He smiled, too.
For that, she would botch as many pronunciations as necessary in the future.
“That is a lovely thought,” he said.
“And if you are amenable,” she said, “we may have more.”
“As long as you are well, and whole, and Constance, too, I wouldn’t mind if this was all the family I had.”
She caressed his palm with her thumb. “I do love you for that. But I don’t believe we should rule it out, all the same.”
“I love you, too, although… what are you on about?”
Impishly, she smiled, the tip of her tongue resting between her teeth.
She saw it play out on his face when he unraveled the implication, and said, “It is a little too early for me to say with full certainty. Perhaps I should not say so to you at all until I am certain.”
He kissed her after shaking his head, slowly.
“Besides, I do not want you to think I am trying to… replace… or supplant… or…” Viola tried to carry on while he was intent upon kissing the life out of her. Or into her. Hard to say, she thought.
Duncan’s hair had flopped into his eyes. “I know. I know you are not. You’ve no malicious bone in your body. And it would not matter to me if we had no children at all.”
She knew they had much to learn about each other, that there were worlds yet to be understood. They’d had plenty of time alone, but little of it was devoted to conversation about family or roots. Perhaps it made her mad that she was so taken with a man whom she’d quite literally collided into.
But she tiptoed up and kissed him, again. In her estimation, they suited each other. The circumstances of their first meeting only reaffirmed it.
He said, “Besides, if you are to continue with your wee salon, I should think a baby would only hinder your progress.”
She bit at his lower lip, just slightly, and he moaned gently into her mouth.
“I think some of the ladies do have children,” she said. “It does not seem to slow them down, at least not by much.”
It was, of course, the time of year when many people were hunkering down amidst winter. She was also occupied by the pending wedding, despite it being so intimate. But she and Constance had gone to see a play, and although it was small in venue and players, her enthusiastic, excitable charge insisted that Viola speak to the actors.
In the moment, Viola wanted to give some kind of lesson about comportment, or she felt obligated to try for Constance’s sake. But it was only a small production among friends, hardly anything of note. She did not suppose that Duncan would find fault with her decision to instead engage them in conversation.
A week from then, Duncan’s parlor was filled with the women of the company—a segregation that she was not sure would last, since he had joined in with some of his lines, meeting plays with poetry. She wondered if more husbands, more friends, would come along. It was a wondrous thing, really, if not for her alone, then for Duncan as well.
He had been shy with her, at first, reluctant to share anything he had written. As it turned out, it was dark, fanciful stuff. He took inspiration from where he’d grown up as a boy, he told her, and she was delighted with it. His focus on the darkness, on the fae and the tide, was a perfect foil to her interest in the everyday.
Where she wanted to tell stories about people, he looked beyond them, to what they dreaded or dreamed at night.
“And it’s not quite formal, is it?”
She could not say without a doubt that she was used to the emerging routines her life now had. What normalcy is there to be had when you are still waiting for your abductor to be brought to light?
That, almost more than anything else, made her think that Papa was here not only for a wedding, but to make sure Everett did not try to increase his reach before he was caught. She shook her head, trying to clear away memories of those sharp, hazel eyes and his pasty complexion.
“I’m sorry,” said Duncan. “I did not mean to insult you. I think it’s grand.”
“It was not that, at all,” she said. “I sometimes wonder when, or where, Everett will rear his ugly head. I was only thinking.”
“He cannot harm you—he doesn’t even have the room to maneuver the way he did in London.” Duncan kissed her forehead and kept them walking on. “Come, we shall go back to the inn and let that old landlord pour us a dram.” He glanced up and his eyes found Constance tracing another headstone’s letters with her fingers. “I wonder if she would like to do any rubbings.”
“I think she would. The trouble is, I haven’t done anything like that before… though I expect I could learn.”
“She would love to learn beside you, I think. Any excuse to do something macabre. Have I told you about the fish? I don’t suppose that’s truly so macabre, but you wouldn’t necessarily think the daughter of a physician would…” he raised his eyebrows. “Well.”
Viola hooked her arm into his. “No, I don’t believe you have.”
As they strolled to Constance, who was peering at some lichens on the stone and muttering to herself, Duncan regaled her with a story of how he’d come home to find Constance had a knack for skinning and deboning fish.
While it was hardly anything she might have believed she’d discuss in a graveyard by the sea with her fiancé—or that the setting and the conversation would coincide—she would have had it no other way.
In her experience, truth was far less predictable than fantasy.
About the Author
Whitney is a bit of a wanderer and something of a bluestocking. She’s been telling stories since childhood, when she would rewrite the endings of her favorite books and movies (or add “deleted scenes” to them). When she’s not writing or reading, she enjoys cooking, dancing, and going for long walks with no specific destination in mind.
Literary work comes naturally to Whitney and she’s very excited to be pursuing her passion – rich storylines, vibrant characters, and most of all, a happily ever after.
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Author website:
whitneyblakeauthor.wixsite.com/whitney
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The Lyon's Den in Winter: The Lyon's Den Page 10