“I will!” Fee started kiting around madly on the end of his arm. “I want to tell Flying Rowan all about the fishy, and I can guddle the next one.”

“Not if you’re making this much racket.”

At her uncle’s simple observation, Fee quieted.

“I will excuse myself,” Hester said. “With company in the house, Mrs. Deal is understandably concerned regarding the menus. Fiona, I’m sure Aunt will want to know all about the fish when you read to her this afternoon.”

“Yes! And I can tell her he was this big!” She stretched her hands about three feet apart, which for Fiona was only a slight exaggeration. She snatched her uncle’s fingers in hers and dragged him off toward the stables, until, as Hester watched, Spathfoy hiked the child onto his back.

Leaving Hester to again enumerate the growing list of difficulties relating to the Earl of Spathfoy.

The worst problem revealed by the morning’s outing was that Spathfoy—for all that his vocabulary and his conceit were in proportion to the rest of him—was a decent man.

Hester had expected he’d recoil upon realizing she was that Miss Daniels, the one who’d tossed aside the son of a marquess. She was the Miss Daniels who’d left a young man to the mercy of his creditors and to the mercy of a father for whom the term “old-fashioned” was a euphemism.

She was the Miss Daniels whose own mother had banished her to the far North, thrown her on the mercy of a brother newly wed to become, at not even twenty-five years old, an object of pity.

Spinster was beyond a euphemism. It was a fairy tale, a benign mischaracterization Hester had been all too willing to accept—though Spathfoy had not.

This endeared him to her, which was a very great disruption of Hester’s plans for the man. He’d teased her. How long had it been since she’d been teased with relentless, gentle good humor?

And then, when she’d indicated he’d made his point, he’d smiled at her. Not one of his buccaneer grins, or a condescending quirk of the lips accompanied by a haughty arch of his brow.

His smile was a blessing. A radiant, soul-warming benevolence just for her.

And—assuming the man was going to head back south without a backward glance—therein lay the sum and substance of Difficulties Number Three through Three Hundred.

* * *

Tye was by no means done reconnoitering enemy territory, but he could start maneuvering his artillery into place nonetheless. Lollygagging by the stream was defensible as an information-gathering expedition—also a pleasant respite after a demanding journey—but his time was limited, and each day had to count.

“This is Hannibal. He’s Uncle Ian’s horse, but he’s getting on. If I’m tall enough, I can have him when Uncle says Hannibal needs a lighter rider.”

Hannibal was every bit as substantial and elegant as Flying Rowan, but there was gray encroaching on the horse’s muzzle, and above his eyes, the bone structure testified to advancing years.

“Wouldn’t you rather start off with a pony, Fiona?”

She stood beside him on a sturdy trunk, her hand extended through the bars into the horse’s stall, and yet Tye could feel every fiber of her little being go still. “Mama says I can’t have a pony until I’m nine.”

“That seems a very long way off.” To a child, even a few months could feel like forever, and a year or two an unfathomable eternity.

“It is forever, a terrible, awful, perishing long time.” She turned around, and with a hearty huff, plopped her backside onto the trunk. “Mama never changes her mind. Aunt Hester says Mama is the Rock of Gibraltar on matters of importance. I think she’s stubborn, and Uncle Ian once told me I wasn’t wrong. I’m stubborn too—so is Uncle Ian.”

Tye had to wonder about a belted earl sharing confidences with a girl child, but then, here he was himself, attempting the very same thing. He took a seat beside his niece on the trunk. “Does your mother have a reason for making you wait such a terribly, awfully, perishing long time?”

“Yes. Mama has a reason, and Papa says it’s a sound reason, so I must not wheedle. Her reason is this: ponies are small, but I am going to be a great, strapping beauty, and so I will outgrow ponies very quickly. The longer I wait for my first one, the fewer ponies I will outgrow. Mama wanted me to wait until I was twelve, but Papa said I was already quite tall, so Mama compromised. They had an argument.”

“Arguments can be loud.”

“They go in the bedroom and lock the door. It isn’t loud. Sometimes I hear Mama laughing.” She hopped off the trunk and crossed the aisle to lean over Rowan’s half door. “He’s very handsome.”

Tye remained where he was, oddly reluctant to pry further information from the child. “Will you miss Rowan when he goes?”

She whirled, which caused the gelding to startle in his stall. “You just got here. You can’t be going away so soon! Why doesn’t anybody want to stay with me? Aunt Ree is too old to travel, and Aunt Hester is only here for the summer to look after Aunt Ree and me. It isn’t fair.”

She turned again to extend a hand to Rowan. The gelding overcame his nerves enough to sniff delicately at her fingers.

“He smells that fish,” Tye said. “Would you enjoy traveling, Fiona? Seeing the sea and the north country, Edinburgh and London?”

She was quiet for a moment while Rowan went back to lipping his hay. “I’ve been to Aberdeen. There are lots of horses there, everything is made of stone, and it smells like fish by the sea. I don’t like the ocean.”

“Come here.” He patted the place beside him. “There’s a menagerie in London, and the royal mews too, which is where the great golden coronation coach is.”

She scrambled onto the trunk and crammed right up against his side. “Is it really made of gold?”

“Sit with me for a moment, and I’ll tell you about it.” He tucked an arm around her small, bony shoulders and tried to recall what had first impressed him about the coach when he’d seen it as a small and easily enchanted boy.

* * *

Augusta MacGregor, Countess of Balfour, worried about her cousin Hester, and thus Ian MacGregor, Earl of Balfour, was prone to the same anxiety. The girl looked far too tired and serious for her tender years.

“Is Fiona running you ragged, Hester?” Ian bent to kiss his pretty cousin-in-law’s cheek, catching a pleasant whiff of lemon as he did.

“Fiona is a perfect angel, but the nights grow short, and I’m not quite settled in here yet.”

A month had gone by since Ian and Augusta had collected her from the train station at Ballater, it being familial consensus that no less person than the earl himself should welcome her back to Aberdeenshire. She’d been pale, brave, and so dauntingly proper in her behavior Ian had wanted to get on the damned train, head to London, and pummel the daylights out of a certain marquess’s youngest son. Matthew and Mary Fran had talked him out of it, lecturing him about sleeping dogs and an earl’s consequence.

He tucked Hester’s hand onto his arm and led her toward the family parlor. “Will Aunt Ree be joining us, or is she resting?”

“She rests a great deal, Ian. I try not to disturb her, but she’ll want to see you.”

“Interrogate me, you mean. Where’s Fiona?”

Hester untangled her hand from his arm. “I left her in Spathfoy’s care. They were visiting the horses, which seemed like a good way for them to get further acquainted.”

“Brave man, to take on Fiona in her favorite surrounds. Do you trust him?”

She took a seat in a rocker by the empty hearth, the same chair Aunt Ree usually favored. “I do not trust him, Ian. Spathfoy came here without any acknowledgement that he’d be welcome or the house even occupied. His family has shown no interest in Fiona since her birth, and yet here he is, when Mary Fran and Matthew are far, far away.”

Ian took the corner of the sofa. “Augusta has a theory about this, and it makes sense to me.”

Hester said nothing and didn’t even set the chair to rocking. Last summer, she’d been lively, good humored, and bristling with energy. This summer, she was a different and far sadder creature entirely.

“Augusta believes old Quinworth is getting on and the young lord is preparing to take over the reins. Showing an interest in Fiona is one way Spathfoy can do that. Then too, by sending his son to look in on the girl, Quinworth isn’t quite admitting he’s neglected his only granddaughter all these years.”

“Men.” She spat the word. “Titled men in particular.” Ian allowed a diplomatic silence to stretch when what he wanted to do involved travel south, cursing, and fisticuffs. “I don’t mean you, Ian. I mean titled Englishmen.”

“Has Spathfoy been so insufferable as all that? I can have him over to Balfour, and if that screaming infant doesn’t send him back to London hotfoot, then Augusta’s discussions of nappies and infant digestion will.”

At long last, humor came into Hester’s blue eyes. “Ian MacGregor, are you complaining?”

“Bitterly. I finally find a woman I want to keep for my own, a woman courageous enough to marry me, and she’s stolen away by a wee bandit no bigger than this.” He held his hands about a bread-loaf’s distance from each other. “Shall I subject Spathfoy to my son’s hospitality?”

“I think not.” She answered quickly and with some assurance, which was interesting. “He’s very well mannered, and Aunt Ree enjoys flirting with him.”

“Ariadne MacGregor has an affliction. She can’t help herself.” Aunt Ree was enough to give a man in contemplation of daughters pause.

Hester rose from her chair to go to the window. “He flirts back, and he’s very good with Fee—patient, but he doesn’t let her get away with much.”

Ian moved to stand beside her, marveling anew at how petite she was. “Give it a few days. He’ll be cowering under his bed to hide from his niece, or she’ll be having him up the trees, into the burn, and down the hillside. I have to admit when Fee and Mary Fran left Balfour House, the place felt like a library, so quiet did it become.”

“It’s not quiet now, is it?”

When the baby slept it was quiet. “You’re quiet, Hester Daniels. How are you getting on?”

She crossed her arms and glowered at the roses beyond the window, but did not retreat to her rocker, ring for tea, or indulge in any of the other genteel prevarications available to her. “I am indebted to my brother for his hospitality. We’re having a lovely summer, or we were until unexpected company arrived.”

“And you don’t want to hand your company over to me and Augusta?”

She wrinkled her nose, which reminded Ian that his cousin-in-law was nigh ten years his junior, with all of one social Season under her dainty belt. That her father had been a conniving scoundrel did not mean Hester herself was worldly, and she’d said little about her reasons for breaking off what ought to have been a very promising match.

“Ian, I like Spathfoy. I don’t want to like him, and he has no charm whatsoever, but he’s…”

Ian watched as a tall, dark-haired man in well-tailored riding attire was led up the path from the stables by Fiona, who appeared to be chattering away all the while. “He’s a good-looking rascal.”

“He’s arrogant,” Hester said, dropping her arms. “He uses vocabulary unsuited to communicating with a child, but she likes him for it. He fascinates her, a shiny new uncle with a fancy accent appearing just as she’s about to die of missing her parents.”

“They’ll be home in a few weeks, and then Spathfoy will be forgotten until he next recalls he has a Scottish niece. By then he’ll have a countess of his own to keep him out of trouble.”

She gave Ian an unreadable look. “I’ll ring for tea.”

Ian watched Fiona tow her shiny new uncle along, and felt a sense of frustration that Augusta had not accompanied him for this visit. Hester was pining for something, or someone, and Ian was at a loss about what to do for the girl.

Mary Fran had suggested peace and quiet would help, but exactly what they were supposed to help with, Ian had not asked.

“Uncle Ian!” Fiona pelted into the room, throwing herself into Ian’s waiting arms. “I spied the biggest fish from up in my reading tree, and we guddled him right to sleep. Uncle said I can do it next time, but not if there’s a storm to raise the burn. Did Aunt Augusta come along? Will you tell her we guddled a huge fishy?”

Ian wrapped his arms around his only niece. “I will tell her you are grown half a foot since I saw you on Saturday. You’ll soon be dancing with your cousin, at this rate.”