Her Scottish Groom

by Ann Stephens

  “Of course she was!” He burst out laughing, and after biting her lip, she joined in.

  Over the next several days, while they did not spend every moment together, they did seek each other out more often. She encouraged him to tell her more about his estate than he had intended. He suspected her attentiveness to be based in the duties that came along with her title, but he appreciated the effort.

  He even mellowed enough to tolerate the presence of Sir Harry Emerson at a small party his wife put together for dinner and the Opera on one of their last nights in Paris. At close quarters, the factory owner turned out to have a self-deprecating wit, which Kieran enjoyed; and a keen enthusiasm for music, which startled him.

  His own interest in the arts extended little further than admiring a pretty opera dancer, and he listened to the spirited discussion of the evening’s performance with increasing boredom. He did bolt to attention when Diantha stood up at the start of the second interval and requested the older man to escort her to inspect the grand staircase.

  Only the request from the Comtesse de Pontrevault to accompany her to visit a friend in a distant box prevented him from trying to follow the pair. After gritting his teeth through ten minutes of gossip, he forced himself to slow to her pace on the return to their box.

  Diantha and Sir Harry came up the stone and gilt staircase, their heads close together. Kieran hung on to the shreds of his temper as passing strangers smiled at the handsome couple. Emerson carried himself with a natural dignity, and his wife looked quite elegant in a low-cut gown of deep rose with touches of black sarcenet ribbon. The diamond aigrette glittered in the light of the chandeliers overhead. He had indeed paid a visit to Cartier, and more diamonds flashed at her neck and her wrists.

  As they neared, he strained to hear their words through the chattering throng.

  “Do you think you could do that?” His wife looked up at Emerson with puckered brows.

  “I’ll have to put the word out to my contacts.” Emerson caught sight of them and patted her black-gloved hand where it lay on his arm. “Lord Rossburn. Madame, did you enjoy speaking with your friend?”

  As they strolled down the crimson carpeted hallway after the performance, he asked her about the conversation with the older man. A slight flush rose to her cheek but her expression remained tranquil. “Sir Harry is merely executing some commissions for me, since we leave Paris shortly.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Something you do not entrust to me.”

  “As you characterized a visit to the Louvre as being dragged to a musty museum filled with pictures of the dead, no, I do not trust you to find paintings I might like.” Giving him a nervous smile, she changed the subject quickly, leaving him to wonder what she hid.

  She did not refuse his advances that night, and as always, her wholehearted response to him touched him deeply. They stayed awake for a while afterward, and he found himself speaking of his home, Duncarie.

  She stroked a hand over his chest. “You’re anxious to get back.”

  “Yes.” He thought her loveliest like this, lips swollen and dark blue eyes dreamy, with her silken skin pressed against his as he held her. “Going away to school was always a wrench.”

  She sighed. “I always envied my brothers because they were allowed to leave. My year at finishing school was the most wonderful of my life, except for being away from my grandmother.”

  “Would it be excessively uncivil to say I like you a lot better now that you’re away from your mother?” He grinned down at her, expecting her to make a sharp retort.

  Instead, some of the light died out of her eyes. “Yes it would.” She dropped her gaze to the linen pillowcase. “But then I like me better now, too.” She rolled onto her side, facing away from him. An invisible barrier rose between them that did not dissipate when he ran his fingers down her back. “I should like to go to sleep now, Kieran. There’s a great deal to oversee before we leave.”

  As had become his habit, he stayed with her until she fell asleep, even dozing himself.

  When he roused, the candles had guttered out. The temptation to stay the night next to her warm body teased at him, but he resisted it. He did not wish to face the recriminations when he eventually lost interest in her. Careful not to wake her, he slipped out of bed and shrugged into his robe. Picking the pyjamas off the floor, he felt his way in the dark to his door.

  He feared he resembled his father too strongly to be good husband material. Better not to hurt her any more than was necessary.

  Lord and Lady Rossburn left Paris a few days later. They stopped in London to allow Diantha to meet some of Kieran’s friends and relatives who had gathered for the Season. At first, she enjoyed attending dinners and balls free from her mother’s domination, but she resented condescending remarks about her family’s mercantile background.

  She particularly dreaded the final dinner party of their stay. A “family party” hosted by the excruciatingly correct Duke and Duchess of Folkestone, connections of Kieran’s mother, it promised to be deadly dull. To bolster her morale, she and Florette selected her toilette for the evening ahead of time, going over every detail in the days previous.

  Now she stood in the center of her room while Florette scrutinized her appearance. They had decided on a gown of rose-colored velvet that enhanced her complexion and eyes. The Rossburn parure had arrived from Scotland and diamonds glittered attractively against her brown hair. The matching pieces adorned her neck, ears, and wrists. After a last twitch of her hem, the servant stepped back. “Milady will do great credit to us this evening.”

  Diantha prayed for patience. The maid’s determination to present her to London in the best light possible verged on the rabid. “How gratifying.”

  As she descended to the landing above the entry hall, Kieran’s voice floated up. “Dammit, Diantha, we should have left ten minutes ago!”

  “I’m terribly sorry for the delay, but we should still arrive in plenty of time.” She offered the apology a little breathlessly, for Kieran stopped shouting as soon as she appeared. Now his appreciative gaze lingered on the swell of her breasts, exposed by the gown’s low neckline. She rubbed her thighs together under skirts, embarrassed at a rush of moisture under the aqua heat of his appraisal.

  He cleared his throat. “You do look very well this evening, but we are late.” Signaling to a waiting footman, he took her wrap and settled it around her shoulders.

  The cool aristocrat of their betrothal had returned and Diantha could have ground her teeth in frustration. The instant his hands left her, she stepped away. “Stop fidgeting. We shall arrive in plenty of time.”

  He said nothing to this retort, but his eyes turned to ice and remained that way until they entered the drawing room at Folkestone House.

  “Try to refrain from outrageous remarks,” he murmured beneath the butler’s announcement of their presence. Diantha sucked in a furious breath.

  Just then one of his more obnoxious relatives, an earl, greeted them. “I say, here’s our wild Scotsman and his merchant bride!”

  Diantha nearly burst out laughing as Kieran’s jaw clenched. She patted her husband’s rigid forearm. “I will when they do.”

  Despite her threat, she reigned in her disdain until after the meal. When the ladies returned to the drawing room, the duchess turned to her with a smile. “My dear, you have enchanting manners. No one would believe you grew up among wild Indians. You must tell us what it was like.”

  A blistering reply rose to Diantha’s lips, but she realized the elderly woman spoke in complete sincerity. “Has Your Grace never read any factual account of life in America?”

  One of Kieran’s second cousins by marriage sniffed. “Excessive reading is highly undesirable in a lady of quality.” From the nods of approval, the rest of the company agreed with her.

  Diantha had had enough. She settled herself on a divan and accepted a cup of tea. “Naturally, the greatest challenge is that everything is made of birch bark,” she began.

/>   When Kieran and the rest of the gentlemen entered after their port, they discovered her explaining, with a straight face, that promenades along Fifth Avenue took the form of covered wagon trains in order to fend off hostile natives.

  Before her outraged spouse could speak, the Earl of Goring harrumphed. “I have traveled to New York myself, never saw any such thing. You owe the company an apology, madam.”

  Diantha gave him a cool stare. “If you bothered to educate females or allowed them to read a newspaper on occasion, they might stop asking me how many Indian attacks I’ve survived.”

  “The female mind is unsuited to the rigors of disciplined study, Lady Rossburn.” The earl delivered his opinion as he flipped his coattails up to seat himself a few chairs away from her. “At least the mind of a true lady is.”

  A thrill ran through the room at the insult. Diantha merely raised an eyebrow and regarded him in silence for a full five seconds, while Kieran took a place behind her chair.

  “Rot.” Turning her back to the spluttering peer, she asked the woman on her right to recommend a good milliner.

  “Looks like Rossburn saddled himself with quite the oddity.” The loud whisper could have come from anyone in the room. Titters broke out from several places.

  Eyes blazing, her husband raked the company with a ferocious glare. “I prefer to think of Lady Rossburn as extraordinary.”

  They excused themselves shortly afterward. Despite his public support, he gave her a resounding scold on the way home for daring to turn her back on an earl.

  She did not back down. “I don’t care if he’s the Prince of Wales! If that man ever sets foot under our roof, I am instituting divorce proceedings.” Fuming, she gathered her evening cloak closer around her in the chilly coach. “And if you’re so upset with me, why did you defend me in there?”

  “What kind of man lets someone insult his wife?” Still angry, he sat stiffly beside her. “A fine opinion you must have of me!”

  “I think more highly of you than you realize.” Diantha snapped the words out. “I only wish you felt the same. ‘Extraordinary’!” She snorted. “It makes me sound like a suspension bridge.”

  Unsurprisingly, he did not come to her bed that night, a circumstance that both relieved her and irritated her further.

  They continued in the same stilted manner for the following day. Neither apologized, and the impasse had not broken when they boarded their train north.

  Diantha dreaded the journey, for they would first travel overnight to Aberdeen and then by coach to Kieran’s estate. Even in a comfortably fitted out private railcar and a well-sprung coach, traveling while cooped up with a surly husband would try the patience of a saint.

  To her relief, Kieran became more affable as the car hummed north. The second morning of their journey, he assisted her onto the railway platform himself, and led her through the crowd to their coach. Already out of sorts from a day and night spent in the confines of the railcar, she regarded the out-of-date vehicle with a jaundiced eye. A second, even older one stood behind it to carry Florette, Davison, and the luggage. She gave the maid a sympathetic look.

  Kieran exchanged greetings with the coachmen, both of whom treated him with a familiarity she did not think a peer would have tolerated.

  “Come, Diantha. It’s time to go home.” He extended a hand to her with the expression on his face of one close to attaining a long-anticipated treat. Expecting a long day jolting through vast empty tracts of land, she suppressed a sigh and permitted him to hand her up.

  Inside, she discovered that the vehicle remained in good condition. A faint smell of new varnish clung to the interior, and she ran her fingers over thick cushions covered with new upholstery before settling back against the squabs.

  It rolled over the busy streets of Aberdeen with scarcely a bounce. In her relief, she resolved not to fall into a foul temper over rough country roads.

  As it turned out, she forgot about bumps as they moved out into the countryside. Outside her window, immense vistas of long narrow valleys stretched into the distance, some with forested sides, some carpeted with grass. She gazed, fascinated, as they passed small farms and herds of sheep and shaggy red cows. Each mile brought the peaks of the Grampians closer.

  Kieran looked out with as much pleasure as she did. “You’re lucky we have a sunny day. In damp weather you can hardly see beyond the side of the road.”

  Shortly before noon they stopped at a small inn bearing a brightly painted sign depicting a trout caught on a fishing line. Only a few other stone houses straggled down the road on either side of it.

  Diantha guessed the grooms had made arrangements on the way to Aberdeen, for no sooner did they descend from the coach than the landlady bustled out, double chins quivering, to announce that a private room awaited them upstairs, luncheon would be served directly, and she would show my lady to the best bedroom herself.

  Kieran dammed the flow of words with a warm greeting. “Mrs. Teagle! You haven’t aged a day since I last visited the Trout. How many hearts have you broken since then?”

  “Flummery, ye wee devil!” She simpered in spite of her protest. “Get inside and wash up before your chicken gets cold.” Davison, standing nearby, winced at her overfamiliarity, and the grooms stared woodenly ahead. Kieran, however, roared with laughter and introduced her to Diantha.

  Diverted by anyone who could refer to her six-foot-two-inch husband as “wee,” Diantha controlled her quivering lips and accepted the woman’s curtsey graciously. She and Florette followed her into the whitewashed hallway and up a dark wooden staircase to a compact bedroom. Taking advantage of the waiting cans of hot and cold water, she washed her face.

  Kieran stood at the window when Mrs. Teagle showed her to the dining room. Curious to see what interested him, she crossed to his side. The view did not differ from what she had seen beyond her coach window all morning, but the wild beauty called to a corner of her heart she had never known existed.

  He absently placed an arm around her shoulders and drew her to him. She rested against him, contented, until the entrance of the bustling landlady interrupted them. After heaving a sentimental sigh at their loverlike attitude, she briskly directed two maidservants in setting out their lunch. With a last curtsey she left them, shutting the door behind her.

  “The fare is simple enough, but I assure you there’s no better cook between Duncarie and Aberdeen.” His earlier ease lessened as he challenged her to criticize the meal.

  “I wouldn’t dream of dismissing someone’s hard work.” She replied with more asperity than she had intended, for she recognized the stout landlady’s efforts to provide a satisfactory meal.

  Not one wrinkle marred the immaculate cotton tablecloth, and the cutlery gleamed from recent polishing. Flowers in a Staffordshire vase decorated the table in a cheery splash of color. They dined heartily on a tender hen accompanied by vegetables and oaten cakes that she learned were called bannocks. Rich scones with clotted cream and strawberry preserves provided a finish.

  Back in the coach, the afternoon passed agreeably, if more slowly than the morning. She and Kieran read and conversed about various points of interest that he pointed out. After a few hours, her eyelids drooped closed and she thought to rest them for a moment.

  She opened them some time later with her head pillowed on his shoulder. Stifling a yawn, she hastily sat up. “How long did I sleep?”

  “Only about an hour.” He stretched his arm and rotated his shoulder.

  “You should have awakened me.” She rubbed her eyes with her fingertips. Looking out the window, she noticed the road curved toward a stone bridge spanning a stream that crossed their route. To cover her embarrassment, she asked about it.

  “Oh, those.” His face took on an expression of scorn. “They’re new. The English built them after Culloden, along with the road.”

  “That was almost a hundred and thirty years ago!” Diantha shook her head in bemusement. “How old does something have to be befo
re you consider it old?”

  “There were Rossburns on our land when Robert the Bruce came to the throne in 1306.” His chin lifted. “I suppose that gives us a different perspective.”

  Although the vital man sitting beside her seemed a far cry from the chillingly polite aristocrat she had married in New York, she wondered if they would ever overcome the differences in their backgrounds. That lowering thought occupied her mind for the next few miles, until Kieran touched her wrist.

  “We’re nearly there. Look.”

  The road dipped into a wide glen and turned to follow the course of a lively stream flowing between two stony banks. Where the stream widened to form a pool, a terraced garden marched down to meet it. A graceful Georgian mansion rose at the opposite end of the garden. It should have looked out of place under the beetling slopes of the hills behind it. Instead, its gray stone invited the travelers nearer, as though offering an oasis of civilization in the untamed vale.

  Kieran proudly pointed out several smaller houses scattered on the floor of the glen. “Crofts. We managed to avoid completely enclosing our land when we were stripped of our power. Some tenant families have been here as long as we have.”

  “Good heavens! It sounds like I’ve stepped back into the feudal era.” She clapped her hand over her mouth, but not before he fixed her with an icy stare.

  “Hardly, as you’ll find out.”

  “Yes, I’m sure I will. I do apologize.” He growled in his throat but said nothing more.

  The house grew larger as they drew closer, revealing graceful proportions and tasteful embellishment. Diantha blinked twice as she noticed one more attribute.

  “Kieran? Is the house, well, glittering?” Her question seemed to restore his good humor, for he chuckled before replying.

  “It’s built of granite from a quarry near Aberdeen. The stone contains a large amount of mica.” Still grinning, he shrugged. “So, it glitters in the sun.”