The entire family, the entire clan, seemed to dote on their son, and it warmed Ian’s heart to see it.
“I want more children, Ian. I want a big family, and we’ve gotten a late start on it.”
“And did you think I was exerting myself so manfully in this bed purely out of selfish motives, Wife?” He dragged her over him, so she straddled his hips and cuddled down to his chest. “If my wife wants more babies, then I will do my utmost to see her pleased in this regard. My marital devotion allows for no less.”
She ran her tongue over his nipple. “Such generosity. What was in the note, Ian? You got very quiet after you read it.”
He rested his chin on her crown and let his hands wander over the long, elegant bones of her back. “We’ve trouble, Wife. Spathfoy has made a surprise raid on your cousin’s household, and we don’t know what his motives are.”
“Spathfoy?” Augusta paused in her teasing to peer up at him. “I don’t recognize the title.”
“He’s heir to the Marquess of Quinworth, and older brother to the worthless, conniving scoundrel who took advantage of my sister and got her with child.” He tried not to let his anger show in his voice or in his body, because Augusta was that perceptive, but Mary Fran had given the faithless bounder her virginity, and Gordie Flynn had given her nothing but pain and humiliation in return.
“Spathfoy lost a brother, Ian. That cannot have been easy.”
“And he has Quinworth for a father, but what if he’s showing up all these years later to snatch our Fiona away, my love? Mary Fran will be heartbroken, and Matthew will stop at nothing to retrieve the child.”
Augusta’s fine dark brows knit, which made Ian want to kiss them. He resisted this notion, because babies slept only so long, and he valued his wife’s counsel.
“Maybe he’s merely showing the colors, Ian. You can’t assume because he’s English his purpose is necessarily nefarious.”
“Nefarious and English are synonyms in the Scottish lexicon, my love. The Flynns made it plain they considered the girl child of a handfast marriage little more than a bastard. They’ve never sent so much as a groat for Fiona’s upkeep or a token for her birthday. I’m not inclined to trust Spathfoy’s avuncular motives very far.”
“Is his father perhaps ailing? That can shift a man’s perspective on family matters.”
Ian let out a sigh of his own. The topic was curdling any notions of further efforts to ensure the large family his wife sought, but Augusta was a good sounding board, and theirs was a marriage without secrets. “I’ll ride over in the morning and get the lay of the land. Hester sounds like she’s in quite a dither, though Aunt Ree will manage the man well enough I’m sure.”
“You’ll behave?” She rose off his chest to spear him with a look. “Charm at the ready, all Scottish good cheer to the fore? You can be very charming when you set your mind to it, Ian. I have your ring on my finger as a result of your charm.”
“There was a bit more to it than that, my love.”
“More, Ian?” She smiled a feline smile, feathered her thumbs over his nipples, and Ian barely had time to send up a prayer that the baby would sleep for at least another hour before Augusta was offering him more, indeed.
Hester had forgotten the pleasure of spending time with a man on his best behavior, particularly a handsome man with a gorgeous voice. If she’d known scolding a lordling would have this effect, she might have behaved very differently with her former fiancé.
Though it was irksome in the extreme to think she’d have to withstand Spathfoy’s good behavior all on her own for the duration of an entire meal. Aunt had decided to take a tray with Fiona, which was probably as well, given the child’s difficult day.
“I am sorry Lady Ariadne will not be joining us for dinner.” Spathfoy offered his arm with all the courtly élan imbued by his breeding. “She gave me to understand she’s something of a family historian, and I would love to hear the tales she has stored in her head.”
“She’s a treasure.” Also a terror. “But her stories are not such as would flatter English ears.”
He seated her at the table without replying, and he had the knack of even that.
A lady needed assistance taking her seat because she had to manage her skirts and petticoats, which involved two hands, generally, and that left the gentleman to manage the chair. Her brother Matthew was no good at it at all, usually catching hems under chair legs, or bumping the chair right into the backs of her knees.
Matthew was her brother. Spathfoy was… a pest. An elegant pest who’d bathed and changed for the evening meal, though even in informal attire, he exuded a kind of inborn grace that was not having a good effect on Hester’s disposition.
“You might be interested to know I am half English, Miss Daniels.”
He’d murmured that soft aside right near her ear as she’d fluffed out her skirts, and in addition to the impact of his silken voice twining through her awareness, she caught a whiff of his scent.
It was all she could do not to bat him away. He smelled of lavender and something lovely—attar of roses? Honeysuckle? She was still trying to dissect the incongruous sweetness in his fragrance when he took the chair to her right.
“Your mother is Scottish, my lord?”
“A Lowlander, but yes. I get my height from her side of the family. May I serve you?”
They were dining informally, with the food kept hot on the table in chafing dishes. This was how the household always dined, but Hester felt a pang not to have Fee chattering away on one side, and Aunt chirping along on the other. They were her family now, and she had quickly grown to love them.
His lordship was regarding her curiously, and Hester realized she’d let the conversation lapse.
“If you would do the honors, my lord. I am very partial to my vegetables. Have your things arrived from the inn at Ballater?”
“They did. I must say I was impressed with the quality of the accommodations. I take it Her Majesty’s interest in the surrounds has done good things for the local economy.”
He passed her a plate full of steaming food, but the portions were such as a large man might consume after a busy day in the fields—an interesting miscalculation from somebody Hester took to be very calculating indeed.
“If I eat this much, my lord, I’ll not be able to rise at the end of the meal.” She set the plate down in front of him and started serving herself. “And as for the local economy, the royal family is here but a few months a year, and that only in recent years. Deeside owes more to the fish than we do to the Crown.”
“Fish?” He watched her serve herself and frowned at the portions she put on her plate. “Miss Daniels, you cannot thrive on such meager fare.”
“There’s trifle for dessert, my lord. Will you say the blessing?” An inspiration, to stick him with something as mundane as blessing the meal.
Her cleverness backfired. He was sitting where Fee usually sat, and out of habit, Hester reached out her hand when it was time to say the blessing. When her fingers closed around Spathfoy’s, she was too dumbstruck at her blunder to withdraw her hand.
Two
“I’d be happy to say the blessing.”
While Spathfoy sat there holding Hester’s bare hand in his, his gaze moved around the table, over the covered dishes, to the huge bouquet of roses starting to wilt on the sideboard, and to the window, where the long hours of gloaming were casting soft shadows. “For journeys safely concluded, for good food, for the company of family and friends, we are grateful. Amen.”
He kept his hand around hers for an instant more, long enough for Hester to register several impressions: his grip was dry, warm, firm, and unhesitating. He wasn’t cursed with bodily shyness, for all his other faults.
And it felt good—far, far too good—to join hands again with an adult male, to feel the latent strength in the clasp of his hand, to revel in simple human contact.
Hester reached for her water goblet at the same time Spathfoy reached for his wine, and their hands brushed again.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Daniels. You were saying something about fish?” He took a sip of his wine, not by word or gesture suggesting a little collision of hands might unnerve him the way it unnerved her.
“The River Dee is among the finest salmon streams in the world, my lord. Throughout Deeside, there are excellent inns and hostelries to accommodate the fishermen who come here for sport. His Highness is a great sportsman, and that doesn’t hurt either.”
“But the royal family is not now in residence at Balmoral, are they?” He ate almost daintily, and yet the food was disappearing from his plate at a great rate.
“Her Majesty usually removes here closer to August. We get quite the influx of English then, all mad for a walk in the Highlands in hopes they’ll encounter the royal family on a ramble.”
“You say this with some aspersion.”
His lovely voice held not so much censure as curiosity. Hester collected her thoughts while she took a sip of her wine, though the truth came out anyway.
“I came to Scotland to be with family, my lord. To escape the social confines of London, and the expectations incumbent on the daughter of a titled man when she emerges from mourning that man’s death. I do not relish the idea of coming across in the woods the very people I sought to avoid when I quit London.”
He was regarding her closely, his expression hard to read, and then he did the most unexpected thing: he patted her hand. A gentle, glancing stroke of his fingers over her knuckles.
The gesture should have felt condescending, but instead it was… comforting.
“Society is the very devil.” He topped off her wine. “As the heir to a marquess, I can only sympathize with your disparagement of it. And my condolences on the loss of your father. I’m hoping my own lives to a biblical age.”
He sounded very sincere in this wish, very human. Hester tried not to be disconcerted by that.
She’d thought dinner would be a struggle, but by the time he was asking her to finish his serving of trifle, she realized more than an hour in Spathfoy’s company had been… enjoyable.
“We’ve almost lost the light, Miss Daniels, but is there time for a short turn in the garden? A stroll before retiring settles the meal and is a personal habit of mine. If nothing else, I can look in on Flying Rowan.”
She could not politely refuse, and it wasn’t pitch dark yet. He assisted her to her feet, taking her hand then tucking it over his arm. He touched her with a certain competence, a male assurance that suggested handling women came instinctively to him.
She could not quite resent him for this—being handled competently was too rare a treat—but Hester vowed she would not be swayed by his abilities in this regard. He was an invading army of one, and his company manners did not make his mission any less suspect.
“The roses are particularly lovely,” she said as they moved across the terrace. “Mary Fran spares no effort in their care.”
“My grandmother was quite the gardener. My Scottish grandmother, that is.”
“And you must have seen her gardens at some point?”
He walked along beside her, making a gentlemanly accommodation to her shorter stride, and yet she felt him hesitate at the question.
“I did. For a succession of boyhood summers, I was sent to my grandparents while my parents attended various house parties in the South.”
He said nothing more, revealed no memories of those long-ago summers, so Hester was casting about for a polite topic they hadn’t yet exhausted, when an odd, ugly sound split the evening gloom. Beside her, Spathfoy paused.
Hester shuddered, wanting to put her hands over her ears. “What is that? It sound like a child in distress, a very young child.”
“It’s a fox, and I’ve been told that sound is Reynard’s attempt to attract a mate.”
“Pity the poor vixen, then, if that’s his best effort at courtship.” Hester wanted to move, to get away from that unpleasant, raucous noise, though it didn’t seem to bother her escort.
“The female’s lot is often unenviable, or so my sisters would have me believe. Which is your favorite rose?”
They made a circuit of the entire garden, until Hester’s head was beginning to ache with the unaccustomed amount of wine she’d consumed and the burden of being sociable to a man she did not like or trust. He left the impression that being cordially pleasant was no effort for him, so thoroughly ingrained were his gentlemanly inclinations.
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