Once Upon a Tartan (7 page)

“My lord, it is curious to me that you would travel such a distance without any guarantee of your welcome. What if Matthew and Mary Fran had closed up the house during their summer travels? It was one plan under consideration.”

“Then I should have paid my respects to Balfour, enjoyed the Highland scenery currently so much in vogue, and taken myself back south. Lady Ariadne seemed cheered at the thought of a house guest. If I am mistaken in this regard, I will be happy to remove to the inn in Ballater while I further my acquaintance with my only niece.”

She closed her book, and Tye had the satisfaction of seeing her neatly cornered by manners and good breeding. When she did not speak but bit her full, rosy lip and regarded her closed book, he gave her a little more to think about.

“I am enjoying my stay, short though it has been. I am not much in the company of my female family, and yet your household at present is exclusively female.”

“And you
like
staying with a child, a dowager, and a spinster?”

“A spinster, Miss Daniels?” She was damned pretty for a spinster. Also quite young.

She lifted her chin so his gaze collided with a pair of solemn blue eyes. “There are worse terms for me, your lordship. Spinster is accurate. I’m not ashamed of it.”

And abruptly, they were beyond the bounds of manners. Her gaze was steady, neither challenging nor defensive, though any fool could see her dignity was supported by some deep hurt.

“You have me at a loss, Miss Daniels.”

She regarded her book of verse the same way Fiona had regarded her injured ankle the day before. “I am a jilt, at least, and others called me a tease—”

“Aunt Hester! I see a fish!” Fiona stood on her tree limb and pointed to the shallows of the burn, making the entire limb as well as its shadows shake. “He’s a great big fellow and taking a nap in the reeds not two feet from the bank.”

Wanting nothing so much as to escape from the faint accusation in Miss Daniels’s somber gaze, Tye yanked off first one boot, then the other. “You mustn’t wake him up. Stay where you are, Fiona. My grandfather showed me how this is done.” He stripped off his socks and rolled up his breeches.

“Will you guddle him, Uncle? Can I watch?”

“You can watch quietly.” Tye rose off the blanket. “Point to him again, then climb down slowly and without making a sound.”

“There.” Fiona stage-whispered and gestured to the dappled shallows. “You can see his tail sticking out from the reeds.”

Tye set his boots and socks aside and stepped one foot at a time into the shallow water downstream from the fish.

“God in heaven.” He stood for a moment, enjoying the shock of the near-freezing water. “This is invigorating. Do not think of dipping a single toe into this water, Fiona. Your word on it.”

“But I want to guddle him too!” She clambered out of the tree and stomped up to the bank. “I saw him first, and I’ve never tickled a fish before.”

“Then this is your chance to learn from your elders. Hush, child. This requires concentration.”

It required no such thing. It merely wanted patience, common sense, and an inhuman tolerance for cold water. By degrees, Tye inched up along the streambed, keeping the delicately waving fishtail in his sight at all times. When he was near enough to the fish, he dipped down on one knee and slipped both hands into the water.

“You start at the tail,” he said softly. If Fiona leaned one inch farther out, she’d fall into the water. “My grandda said to begin with one finger and stroke slowly, slowly along the belly.”

He made contact with a cool, smooth fish belly, using the tip of one index finger.

“And you mustn’t rush it. Mustn’t disturb his dreams, but rather, steal into them.” He added a second finger in a slow, back-and-forth stroking motion. “If you get greedy, you’ll wake him rather than lull him deeper to sleep.”

“Is it like a lullaby when you tickle him?” Fiona’s voice was soft and wondering, just as Tye’s had been when his grandfather had first shown him how to tickle a fish.

“Like a lullaby, or rubbing a baby’s back to coax her to sleep.” He shifted his fingers up the fish’s belly, half inch by half inch. “He’s quite good size.”

“I want to see!” Fee hissed out her frustration, slapping her fists against her thighs.

“Fiona.” Miss Daniels’s voice was soft with reproach from her place at Fiona’s side. “Lord Spathfoy is not freezing his toes off so you can scare the fish away with your chatter.”

Fiona fell silent as Tye stroked his fingers back and forth, back and forth. “I’m close.” He was whispering, and when he glanced up, he saw both Fiona and Miss Daniels’s expressions were rapt with expectation.

“Another moment.” Another moment and his calf submerged in the burn would cramp or lose sensation altogether. Tye slid his hands around the fish and closed gently.

“That’s it. There we go.”

He lifted the fish up out of the water, feeling inordinately pleased with himself.

“He’s enormous!” Fiona reached out a hand then dropped it. “May I touch him?”

“Of course, though he’ll start to thrash here directly.” The fish was panting, dazed, and soon to realize its mortal peril.

“He’s very pretty, and cold.” Fiona ran a finger over the fish’s side. “He looks like the light from the water is caught in his skin.”

“His scales,” Tye said. “If we don’t toss him back soon, he’ll die.”

“Toss him back?” Fiona glanced over at her aunt. “Won’t Deal want him for the kitchen?”

Miss Daniels looked horrified at the very notion. “We won’t tell Deal quite how big he is.” While Tye watched, Miss Daniels ran her fingers down the cold, scaly length of the fish’s body. “Best toss him back quickly, my lord.”

Tye hadn’t expected her to touch the fish then command its rescue. He gently lobbed the creature to the far side of the stream, and they all three watched as it swam away down the current.

Fiona slapped her hands together. “That was capital! If we see another, may I try?”

“You may,” Tye said, slogging up onto the bank. “With your aunt’s permission.”

“Not by yourself, Fiona MacGregor. The burn is a pretty little stream now, but one storm higher up in the hills, and it can rage over its banks.”

“Why can’t I ever do anything by myself?” The fish forgotten, the child repaired to her tree—a reading tree, rather than a treaty oak—and began to climb.

Tye waited while Miss Daniels resumed a place on the blanket, then took a spot immediately beside her just to see what she’d do. “You allow her to address her elders in such a manner?”

She picked up her book. “Why don’t you give her a stern talking to,
Uncle
? Let her see that with merely a cross word, she can pique your interest and rivet your attention. As fascinated as she is with you—or perhaps with your horse—she’ll be bickering the livelong day in no time. And she’s right: she is left little to her own devices.”

Miss Daniels turned a page, as if she were reading in truth.

“You’ve piqued my interest, Miss Daniels.”

She looked up, her expression gratifyingly wary. “My lord?”

“You mentioned the words jilt and tease. These are pejoratives, and I would have you explain them.” He kept his voice down out of deference to the child’s proximity, though Fiona was warbling among the boughs in Gaelic about her love gone over the sea.

The lady closed her eyes and expelled an audible breath. When she opened them, as close as Tye sat to her, he could see flecks of gold in her blue irises and flecks of deeper blue.

“If you frequent London society, my lord, then you are as aware as the next titled lordling that I’ve recently broken an engagement to Jasper Merriman—Lord Jasper. The situation was particularly nasty, because the gentleman had been counting heavily on my dowry. He threatened to bring suit.”

“God in heaven. Suit? Against you? I’ve never heard of such a thing—a lady is permitted to change her mind. Even the courts know that.”

“Breach of promise, though he was convinced to take the more gentlemanly route.”

“Convinced by a goodly sum of coin, no doubt.” He couldn’t keep the anger from his voice. A woman brought suit for breach of a man’s promise, because a man’s word was the embodiment of his honor. A young woman’s word was hardly hers to give, because she was in the care of her parents if the match involved a lady of any standing.

“You censure him for this?” Her tone was careful, merely inquisitive.

“Of course I censure the bas—the beggar. Living on one’s expectations is foolishness, and threatening to drag a woman’s good name through the courts, when that woman was previously considered adequate to mother one’s children… Of course I censure him. What was his name? Merridew?”

“Merriman. Third son of the Marquess of Spielgood.”

“For God’s sake… A third son, no less. He should be horsewhipped. I hope your brother dealt with him.”

“My brother paid him off.”

And from the way she took to studying the burn, Tye divined that this was the real hurt. Not the gossip, not the labeling, not Merriman’s legal posturing and dishonorable conduct. The real shame, for Hester Daniels, was that her brother had been put to embarrassment and expense on her behalf.

“He doesn’t blame you.”

She glanced over at him fleetingly, then resumed her perusal of the burn, the banks, the fields and hills beyond. “I beg your pardon?”

“Your brother does not blame you. He blames himself. If he’d been more attentive, you would not have taken up with a bounder like this Merrifield idiot.” Her lips quirked at his purposeful misnomer, the smallest, fleeting breach in her dignity. He wanted to widen that breach.

“Matthew did not approve of the match. Because my older sister was not yet betrothed, my father kept his agreement with Jasper private. Then too, Mama wanted me to have my own Season once Genie was engaged.”

“But your father died, and there were no more Seasons for you.” She nodded, and Tye might have seen her blinking at the book in her hands.

“I had only Jasper’s word for the fact that Altsax had agreed to the match. The solicitors could only tell us my father had instructed them to draw up the settlements. He never signed them or sent them to Jasper’s solicitors.”

Now this purely stank. “How would breach of promise have been proved if there were no signed agreements?”

She set the poetry aside and smoothed a hand over her skirts, putting Tye in mind of his younger sister’s habit of twisting a lock of hair when unnerved. “Jasper proposed to me in the park one afternoon, directly after I’d concluded my mourning for Altsax. Before one and all, his lordship put a ring on my finger and kissed my cheek.”

“That is utter
rot
.” He wanted to throw her bloody, bedamned book into the water. “The bastard ambushed you, caught you unawares, and set you up so you could not refuse. He must have been very deep in debt indeed, and my guess is old Spielgood cut him off.”

She abruptly found Tye worthy of study. “Do you think so?”

“For God’s sake, Miss Daniels, I know so. Younger sons face a choice—I know, my brother was one. They can either try to be more noble than their titled fathers and brothers, or they can spend their lives pouting because they were born two years or two minutes behind their older sibling. This Merriberg fellow was entirely beneath you, you’re well rid of him, and he’s lucky your brother didn’t arrange a bare-knuckle encounter with him in some dingy alley.”

Her lips were threatening to turn up again. “You are carrying on like a brother now.”

She sounded
approving
, damned if she didn’t. Tye wrestled the urge to hunt down Jasper Merridamn and introduce him to some of Tye’s favorite pugilistic theories.

“I
am
a brother. I have three younger sisters, not a one of them married, and if I understand anything, it’s the perils of Polite Society.”

“You truly think I’m well rid of him?”

She sounded plaintive, which left Tye wanting to have a word with the woman’s brother. “Has no one told you as much?”

“Aunt has. My cousin Augusta. Fiona.”

But she hadn’t heard it from her menfolk, or apparently from her own mother. Tye schooled himself to sound older and wiser, and not bloody angry on her behalf.

“You think you are destined for a life of obscurity, and that your great shame will follow you all your days. I am loathe to inform you, Miss Daniels, that your great shame has already been forgotten by every tabby and tattletale in London. At least four scandals have crowded in on the heels of your little contretemps, each juicier than the last. You are tormenting yourself for nothing. The man took advantage of you when you were grieving, pressed an expectation never legally his, and embarrassed you unforgivably in the process. Take a few turns around a few ballrooms next Season, and the matter will be at an end. I will be happy to stand up with you for this express purpose.”

He fell silent because there was no disguising the anger in his tone. Was chivalry to die such an easy death at the hands of the men of England?

The lady at least looked interested in his version of events, which was an odd relief. He much preferred her spewing hail and lightning on all in her path.

Or possibly, he preferred to see what would happen if she permitted herself even one genuine smile aimed in his direction.

“Did you know, Miss Daniels, that Henrietta Mortenson was caught out in a punt on the Cam when a downpour started, and though her escort offered his coat, she was drenched through to the skin before he could row her ashore? This occurred not two weeks past, and I was told repeatedly, whether I wished to hear it or not, that every stitch of the embroidery on her underlinen was visible through the wet fabric of her dress, and very nice stitch work it was, too.”

“Oh, do be quiet. Fiona will overhear you.”

“Good. Then she’ll know what to expect when she makes her bow. I also have it on good authority that to win a dare from her sister, Sally Higgambotham allowed Sir Neil Forthambly to kiss her, but her brothers overheard the dare and placed side bets on whether they could compromise the couple into marriage. The couple was caught, but I do not know if an announcement has yet been issued.”