The Madcap (23 page)

“We’re making bread, Daddy!” his two-year-old
son, William, said as he looked up from his stool
where he sat next to Marianne at the long worktable.
She was instructing him in the art of bread making.

Alasdair strode across the room to join them. “It
looks like you’re doing a good job,” he said, although Alasdair privately thought that William was more interested in making a dusty mess with the flour than he
was in making a neat loaf of bread.

Marianne caught his eye. “Did you know, William,
that when I first met your dad, he couldn’t make a bed
or make bread?”

“Really?” William asked in amazement.

Marianne smiled softly across the table at Alasdair,
her hand going to the gentle mound just starting to
show beneath her apron. There would be another child
in a few months, another child for his dream of having
a real family. It was her dream, too, and he loved her
all the more for it.

Each day Highborough became a place he loved
more and more. He loved seeing William’s toys in the
drawing room. He loved having to kick a ball out of his
path as he made his way to his study. He loved having
William play in his study as he did estate business
while Marianne read a book just a few feet away. It was
true that Highborough had benefited from his wife’s
dowry, but not all of her dowry was financial. Alasdair
could not begin to calculate the ways she’d changed his
life-ways that went for beyond the value of a dollar.
She’d changed the lives of those around them too.

Sarah Stewart, upon Marianne’s encouragement,
moved into the dower house on their property and began traveling. Alasdair’s mother saw her dream of joining the Stewart and Pennington properties by marrying Sarah’s father herself, and moving into his estate, leaving Marianne and Alasdair alone at Highborough.

If Highborough had a few more nicks in the wood
and a few more scratches on the floor, it was easily offset by the weekly smell of bread baking in the kitchens
and the purple of Romagna blooming in the flower beds.

Alasdair reached across the table and wiped a smear
of flour from Marianne’s cheek, and she smiled at
him, her love for him obvious in her eyes. He was the
luckiest of men and he knew it. Love had found him in
the form of his sourdough heiress, an unlikely madcap
from San Francisco. Alasdair smiled back at Marianne. Love had found him when he’d least expected it.
Indeed, he’d never seen it coming.