Once Upon a Tartan mt-2

by Grace Burrowes

  “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 establish 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.

  He was wearing spectacles, gold-rimmed reading spectacles that made him look more scholarly, more like a husband or a father, but no less like a lover.

  “Hester.” He rose and approached her, his expression guarded. “If you’re having trouble sleeping, I can have the kitchen—”

  She was plastered to his chest before he could finish speaking. “I’ll leave tomorrow. I’ll take Fee home, tomorrow, Tiberius, I promise, I just can’t— You might have been killed, worse than killed, and all because I didn’t keep an adequate eye on Fee, and then your father, with the gun—”

  “Hush, Hester, calm yourself.” His arms came around her slowly but securely, which only made the ache in her chest worse. “I’ve told him he’ll not have the raising of her, not if he can’t keep her safe. I’ll take you to the train station myself, just please, don’t cry.”

  She breathed in the clean scent of him, wallowed in the strength and warmth of his embrace. “Did you bathe, Tiberius? Did you scrub your hands? The fox was likely rabid. His lordship was right, I know he was.”

  “Hush. I am unharmed, and believe me, I inspected and bathed my person thoroughly, several times.”

  She wanted to inspect his person, and medical reasons were the least of her motivations. The need arose abruptly, barreling through all her other upsets with the raging clarity of hopeless desire.

  “Tiberius, I want—” She worked the knot of his dressing gown open, leaving him standing there, his robe gaping. Her brain registered that he was not stopping her and he was not arguing with her.

  Not reasoning with her. She slid her hands around his waist and leaned her forehead on his chest. “Please, Tiberius.”

  “The train leaves at eleven in the morning, Hester.” He spoke gently, his words conveying compassion but not compromise. “I want you and the child gone from here before Quinworth can rally his defenses. It’s important to me that—”

  She sank to her knees and pressed her face to his thigh. “Please.”

  A quiet moment went by while she remained in the posture of a supplicant, then his hand stroked over her hair, a soft caress that granted her permission to take what she would of him before they parted. The frantic haste beating at her from within subsided. She took a slow, deep breath, exhaled, and put her mouth to the length of his cock.

  He was not aroused, or not very aroused, which meant she participated orally in the building of his desire. By degrees, as she kissed, nuzzled, stroked, and suckled, his passion rose, until he stepped back.

  “Hester, shall I take you to bed?”

  “Yes. We shall take each other to bed.” She paused only to remove every stitch of her nightclothes while he shrugged out of his robe. In a state of complete undress, he crossed the room to lock the door.

  Hester sat on the bed and continued to drink in the sight of him as he used his tooth powder at the washbasin. “You aren’t telling me this is misguided, Tiberius.”

  “I don’t need to tell you that, Hester. If you truly think this is misguided, you’ll cross the hallway to your own room.” His observation held logic, not arrogance; if anything, he was smiling slightly at the basin. “Is Fiona managing?”

  “She was exhausted. She did not and does not comprehend the danger she was in.”

  “She’ll be a mother someday.” He glanced at her over his shoulder as he dragged a brush through his hair. “Or an aunt. She’ll understand then. I’ve had wires sent to Balfour.”

  He would think of that. And then he was stalking over to the bed, looking not competent and practical, but gorgeous, aroused, and heartrendingly dear. “I do not guarantee that I can protect you from conception tonight, Hester Daniels.”

  “It doesn’t signify.”

  Now he looked like he wanted to argue, so she rose up on her knees and kissed him where he stood by the bed. “It does not signify. I will be gone in the morning, Tiberius. I understand that. I understand much that was not clear to me until today. For tonight, please just love me.”

  He muttered something, which in Gaelic would have sounded very much like “I do,” but words were not of any interest to Hester when his mouth finally settled on hers. No matter he was not renewing his proposals, no matter she might never see him again; he was kissing her as if she were life and breath and sun all wrapped into one, as if his soul required it of him.

  As if there were no tomorrow, which for them—as far as Hester was concerned—was the sad and unavoidable truth.

  * * *

  Hester was upset, seeking reassurances, and making a very great mistake. Tye’s duty was to kiss her forehead and steer her right out into the corridor, then shut and lock his door behind her.

  This was the honorable course. His brain knew it, and even admonished him to follow such a course. His body was ignoring such pleas, and his heart had clapped its hands over its figurative ears.

  She would not thank him in the morning for following the honorable course; she would look at him with big, bruised eyes and silently reproach him from memory for the rest of his blighted days. And if she wasn’t yet carrying his child, Tye could hope to effect such a miracle on what might otherwise be their last night together.

  Duty and honor be damned, this was the woman he loved, the woman he was meant to go through life with, though she’d denied his every proposal.

  Tye’s self-restraint in the past was nothing compared to the discipline he applied now. He laid Hester down on the enormous four-poster where he’d tossed and turned away the past week of nights, and came down over her. When he’d feasted for a time on her kisses, he worked his way south, treasuring her breasts, her soft, feminine belly, her sex.

  She denied him nothing, not her kisses, not her sighs, not the sweet, secret female parts of her body. When he tucked her legs over his shoulders, he knew a passing regret that he hadn’t put a pair of his socks on her feet, the better to stroke his back with.

  But only a passing regret. He deluged her with pleasure, showered her with it until he was certain she’d be sore for a week. And when at last he joined his body to hers, he vowed he’d wreak yet more pleasure upon her, so much pleasure that she would recall this night of loving for all her days.

  He kept that vow, but when her body was convulsing around him, wringing the last drop of passion from their joining, Tye’s self-restraint collapsed, his good intentions disappeared, and he followed Hester into a pleasure as intense and as soul deep as it was bittersweet.

  * * *

  “This is my mother’s direction in Edinburgh. You should not need it, but I don’t like sending you off without even a maid.”

  Hester’s lover from the previous night was nowhere to be found, except perhaps lurking in the green eyes of this serious, handsome man. “We’ll be fine, Tiberius. I’ve gotten quite used to traveling about by train.”

  Fiona swung Hester’s hand. “I’ll be fine too. Will you say good-bye to Albert for me?”

  “Of course, and let me stow this fellow for you.” Tye held up the carpetbag housing the rabbit. “You’ll have to watch that he isn’t nibbling through the fabric, Niece. A rabbit loose on Her Majesty’s rails will not do.” He stuffed the bag on the over
head rack, and the train whistle sounded a warning blast.

  “I wish you were coming with us, Uncle, and Flying Rowan too.”

  “I’ll write to you, Fiona, and I don’t want to hear about any cheating at cards either.” In the cramped confines of the compartment, he went down on his haunches and hugged the child tightly. “You are my favorite niece. Never forget it.”

  “I’m your only niece.”

  And again, for the hundredth time in twenty-four hours, Hester’s heart broke, this time simply from seeing Fiona share her favorite-niece joke with Tiberius, proof positive the man was secure in the child’s love and affection.

  “Aunt.” Fiona tugged on Hester’s skirts, forcing her down into what was nearly a huddle with the child and the earl. “You must tell Uncle you love him and you will miss him.”

  She’d spoken in Gaelic. With childish good intentions, she’d driven spikes into Hester’s composure and into her heart. Hester managed an answer only haltingly, and not because she stumbled over the Gaelic.

  “I will miss him badly, but it’s like with the fox, Fiona. Spathfoy needs to be with his family, and they need him. They need him desperately.”

  “We’re his family.”

  Hester could only nod and rise to her feet, feeling older than Aunt Ree on a wet, chilly night. Spathfoy took her hand in his without even sparing a glance at the passage beyond the open door.

  “You will write to me if there’s need?”

  Another nod, while a lump as wide as the Highlands formed in her throat. The damned man kissed her forehead, and when he would have stepped back, Hester held on to him. “Tiberius, I am sorry.”

  The train whistle blasted twice, and the look he gave her was torn. “I cannot fathom what you’d be apologizing for. Please get word to me when you’ve arrived safely in Ballater. I want a wire, Hester, not some damnable polite letter arriving after Michaelmas.”

  “Uncle said a bad word.”

  He tweaked Fiona’s braid. “I’m expressing strong feelings, probably not for the last time.” Then he swung his gaze back to Hester. “My dear, I must leave you now. There are things I must resolve with my father and my sisters before I am otherwise free. You will send word?”