“You were naughty.” She rested against him more heavily. “Ian MacGregor, must I remind you of the requirements of proper behavior?”
“Yes, Wife, I fear you must. At great length and in considerable detail. The privacy of our bedchamber would be an ideal location for this reminder.” He growled this command into her ear, which caused her to cuddle against him, her shoulders shaking with suppressed mirth. She was such a dignified woman generally that he loved to make her laugh. “I would have reported earlier for my lesson in proper deportment, except I cut into Ballater to arrange for a few wires to be sent.”
He turned her under his arm so they could start walking toward the house before Ian’s interest in his wife’s scolding reached embarrassing proportions. “Wires are expensive, Husband.”
“But expedient. Matthew and Mary Fran need to know there’s an English lordling slithering about in their garden.”
“Is he slithering?”
“The poor bastard is here as the old man’s emissary. I think Spathfoy has orders to reave little Fee right out from under our noses, and the guilt of it is nigh killing the man.”
“Do you mean reave in the legal sense, or in the Scottish sense?”
“That’s what one of the wires was about, to see if there are any custody suits recently brought regarding our niece, and to see where Quinworth is lurking while his son is on holiday in our backyard.”
“You didn’t send one to Mary Fran and Matthew?”
“I sent three. Now about that lecture you promised me, Countess? I have been exceedingly remiss, I am planning on being naughtier still, and my only hope of proper guidance rests with you.”
He scooped his wife into his arms and carried her up two flights of stairs, only to hear a certain Terror waken from his nap in a predictable state of loud and hungry indignation just as Augusta was on the point of unfastening her husband’s breeches.
* * *
A list of known aphrodisiacs had circulated among Tye’s confreres at university, but lemon verbena had assuredly not been among the foods, fragrances, and substances named.
Nor had fresh air, or the scent of heather, or the sound of a burbling Scottish stream, or proximity to tartan wool, but something or someone had so unbalanced the relationship between Tye’s self-restraint and his base urges as to violate every tenet of common sense.
One did not accost decent young women, no matter how much in need of kissing they might seem.
One did not kiss young ladies who had given no overt indication they were receptive to such advances.
One did not allow oneself into compromising situations where any wandering neighbor might come upon one.
But one was also having great difficulty forgetting the kiss, and the compromising situation, and the decent young lady from whom the kiss had been stolen.
Behind his closed door, Tye wrote a letter—not a report—to his father, who was rusticating at the family seat in Northumbria. To his sisters, he dashed off notes full of drivel about the fresh Scottish air and beautiful Scottish skies. He wrote to the steward of his estates in Kent and outside Alnwick, and in sheer desperation, he even wrote to his mother in Edinburgh.
And still, when he sanded the last epistle, he had not in the least changed the fact that he’d kissed Hester Daniels.
Thoroughly, but somehow, not thoroughly enough.
And worse yet—far worse—she had kissed him back.
He tossed his pen down and leaned back in his chair, his gaze going to the view of the gardens, stables, and grounds stretching between the manor and the surrounding hills.
Maybe the fresh Scottish air was to blame.
He enjoyed sex enthusiastically when it came his way, and it came his way frequently. Friendly widows were thick on the ground in the social Season, and if they were ever in short supply, Tye had been accosted by any number of wives intent on straying. Then too, there were women on the fringes of Polite Society with whom arrangements involving coin and exclusive sexual access could be discreetly made.
Those women were available once terms were struck. Hester Daniels—jilt, tease, spinster, or whatever inaccurate label she wanted to put on herself—was unavailable to him.
And always would be.
A quiet triple tap on his door interrupted another round of self-castigation.
“Come in.”
“Uncle!” Fiona literally skipped into the room, leaving the door open behind her. “I read to Aunt Ree, and we spoke French, and she said I could write to Mama in French tomorrow if I look up five very big words tonight. Are you writing letters?”
“I was.” He shifted the stack of missives to the side while the infernal child scrambled up onto his knees.
“May I see?”
“No, you may not. Shouldn’t you be at your lessons?”
“I did my reading lesson. Tell me some big words in French. You have to spell them.”
“Here.” He passed her a pencil. “Spell this: p-e-s-t-i-l-e-n-t-i-e-l.”
“What does it mean?”
“It’s French for niece.”
She squirmed around to scowl at him. “Niece is the same word with an accent like this over the e.” She drew her finger down in imitation of an accent grave. “Are you in a bad mood?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
For God’s sake… He set the child aside and rose. “Because I came up here for privacy, and you have intruded.”
Her brows drew down in an expression that put Tye in mind of her step-aunt, though Miss Daniels was unrelated to the girl except insofar as both females bothered him. “Then, Uncle, you should not have let me come in.”
“That would have been rude.”
“You’re being rude now.”
He wanted to bellow at the little imp, wanted to transport her bodily to the corridor, but she was regarding him with such an air of mischief he felt his lips quirking up. “My apologies.”
“You could tell me what’s bothering you.” She skipped to the bed, hopped up the three steps on one foot, then hiked herself onto the mattress. “Aunt Hester was in a bad mood when she came here a few weeks ago, but she explained to me that she’d had her heart broken. She came here for it to get better. Is your heart broken?”
“It is not. Please remove your person from that bed.”
She hopped down, again on one foot. “Aunt said her beau took unseemly liberties, and she should have coshed him on the head.” Fiona swung her fist in a fierce downward arc through the air while Tye smoothed the wrinkles from the counterpane of his bed. “I told Aunt Hester there are no beaus here in Scotland, we only have braw, bonny lads. Aunt Augusta said we had braw, bonny earls too, but she meant Uncle Ian. He winked at me when she said it.”
“Is that where you acquired such a lamentable habit, from your uncle Ian?”
She winked at him. “It’s a secret. I’ll see you at tea.” As quickly as she’d invaded his privacy, she skipped right back out to the corridor.
The ensuing silence had a peculiar, relieved quality. Tye had just sat back down at his desk when Fiona poked her head around the doorjamb. “May I call you Uncle Tye? Aunt Hester said your real name is Tiberius, which would be a grand name for a bear, I think.”
“It’s a perfectly adequate name for an earl, but yes, you may call me Uncle Tye.”
She grinned at him, a huge, toothy expression of great good spirits, winked once more, and disappeared.
Tye stared at his stack of letters. He had not mentioned any kisses in those letters, just as Hester Daniels hadn’t mentioned her worthless excuse for a fiancé taking unseemly liberties or needing his head coshed.
Which left Tye pondering why his own head had not been coshed by that fair lady when he’d taken unseemly liberties. Why she’d kissed him on the cheek without any provocation on his part at all.
He picked up the pencil and started making a list.
* * *
“I have been foolish.” Dear Hester made this pronouncement in
tones indicative of an impending bout of martyrdom, so Ariadne set aside her third husband’s journal and resigned herself to patience.
“I hope you at least had a grand time being foolish.”
The girl dropped into the rocking chair by the hearth—a feat Ariadne hadn’t attempted without assistance or planning for more than a decade. “I am not jesting, Aunt. I was very rag-mannered to Lord Spathfoy.”
Ariadne gave the kind of snort an old woman was permitted even in public. “That one. He could do with some rudeness. He’s handsome as sin, in expectation of a title, and wealthy to boot. I hope you took him down several pegs.”
“I kissed him.” A furious blush accompanied this confession.
“I’m envious. Did he kiss you back?”
“You’re envious?” Hester shot to her feet and started pacing the small confines of Ariadne’s sitting room—small rooms were easier to keep warm—leaving the rocking chair to bob gently, as if inhabited by a ghost. “I toss propriety to the wind when I know the fate of my good name is hanging by a thread, and you are envious? Spathfoy isn’t some younger son trying to cadge a dowry so he can keep up with his gambling cronies. He’s going to be Quinworth, and I’ve disgraced myself utterly, again.”
The girl was overdue for some dramatics. She’d been pale and composed for weeks, only rousing from her brown study when Fiona dragged her out-of-doors or Ian got her onto a horse.
“You are not to blame for Merriman’s mischief, Hester Daniels. He was a bad apple, as my fourth husband would have said. Spoiled rotten and contaminating all in his ambit. Do you know how many men I’ve kissed?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Such pretty manners. Do have a seat. You’re making my neck ache with all your stomping about.”
Hester popped back into the rocker. She was nothing if not considerate of her elders.
“I asked if you knew how many men I’d kissed.”
She looked guardedly intrigued. “Of course, I can’t know such a thing.”
“I’ve lost count as well, but I’ll tell you, Hester Daniels, from where I’m sitting now, waiting to shuffle off this mortal coil, it wasn’t nearly enough.”
“Aunt, perhaps in a former era, when society was less—”
Ariadne waved a hand. “Bah. Society has always delighted in catching the unwary in their missteps, and there have always been missteps. Old George ran a proper court, I can tell you. To bed at a reasonable hour, up early to ride for hours, and yet, look at his get. A crop of fifteen children. Even his princesses were not entirely chaste, and old King William had more Fitz-bastards than some people have fingers. Do you think you’re the first woman ever to steal a kiss? Merciful sakes, child, men are so blockheaded one must sometimes draw them a map.”
Hester’s brows drew down, suggesting Ariadne’s outlook wasn’t one shared by whatever tutors and governesses had raised the girl.
“But, Aunt, I enjoyed kissing him.”
“I kissed his grandfather once, the one he’s named for. The man knew a thing or two about comforting a widow—all in good fun, of course.”
“He’s named for a grandfather?”
Bless the girl; she didn’t hide her interest in even such a crumb of information as this. “He’s named for his maternal grandfather, a Lowland Scottish earl who knew how to turn a coin practically out of thin air. Quinworth’s wealth today owes much to the dowry and financial abilities Spathfoy’s mother brought to the match.”
“He’s never mentioned his parents.”
“They are cordially distant, as happens in the later years of many a dynastic match. Was Spathfoy flirting with you when you kissed him?”
“Yes.” An unequivocal answer, which suggested his strapping, handsome lordship had been engaged in more than pretty compliments.
“Then kiss him some more, for pity’s sake. You’re both at loose ends, he’s handsome, and who knows, you might form an attachment.”
“Aunt, one is supposed to form the attachment before one appropriates any kisses.”
She was so certain of this progression, Ariadne felt sorry for her. “And were you attached to young Merriman?”
Hester stared at her hands, which rested in her lap. Her expression was wiped clean of all intentional emotion, but Ariadne had buried four husbands, and the misgivings and griefs of women were familiar to her.
“This is your real worry, isn’t it? The man you gave your hand to, however temporarily, did not charm you with his kisses, and yet this arrogant intruder has you sighing and glancing on only a few days’ acquaintance.”
Hester sprang onto her feet again and went to the window. The girl spent a lot of time considering the views from various windows. “What if I am unnatural? What if I can only have feelings for things and people forbidden to me?”
Ariadne considered Hester’s poker-straight posture and the tension in her fists.
“What if you are completely natural, healthy, and attracted to one of the finest specimens of manhood I’ve seen in decades? What if he’s attracted to you, and what if you’re both sensible enough to explore the attraction—within reason?”
Hester turned to face Ariadne and crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you encouraging this foolishness?”
“Yes. Yes, I certainly am. I am encouraging you to put the unfortunate situation with Merriman behind you. The man was a cad and an idiot. I suspect he rushed his fences with you and showed you the low cards in his hand far too plainly. Get back on the horse, my girl. Toy with Spathfoy’s affections all you like. He can manage for himself, and you might find you suit.”
“But what if he toys with mine?”
The question was bewildered, anxious, and sincere. Ariadne did not permit herself to smile.
“Then you enjoy it. And when he trots back to England in a week or two, you thank him for a few kisses and remember him fondly. All need not be drama and high dudgeon, Hester, and if you didn’t want to kiss a man like Spathfoy, I would be worried about you indeed. Now, we’ve missed our Gaelic since Spathfoy has joined us. Shall we practice?”
Hester rang for tea, and with the determined mispronunciation of the young and serious, started her daily session mangling the language of her own maternal ancestors—while being very clear about where her current interests lay.
“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 arriva
l. 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.
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