Once Upon a Tartan (38 page)

“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?”

He was harping on this. Hester finally realized he was concerned that she was with child. “I will send word if there’s need. Good-bye, Tiberius. Read your brother’s will.” The words had slipped out. She might send a wire, a few sentences of platitudes, but this admonition she’d give him in person.

The train whistle sounded three times, and on the platform, the conductor was bellowing the “all aboard.”

“Good-bye, Uncle. I won’t cheat. I love you!”

“I love you too, Fiona. Safe journey.”

A swift, hard kiss to Hester’s lips, and then he was gone. Hester took the backward-facing seat as the train began to move, the better to stare at Tiberius’s tall, still figure growing smaller and smaller, until a bend in the tracks took him entirely from her sight.

***

“But when are we going to get there?” Fiona’s question had long since taken on the singsong quality of a child determined to pluck the last adult nerve within hearing and pluck it hard.

They’d made the transfer smoothly enough in Edinburgh, but now, not twenty miles north of the city, the train had stopped dead on the tracks.

And not moved for an hour.

“I do not know when we’ll make Aberdeen, Fiona. Would you like to play another game of matches?”

“No. It’s too hard to spread out all the cards in this stupid train.”

“Shall we walk beside the tracks for a moment?”

“It’s going to rain, and then I shall get wet and stay wet until we get home. Why isn’t the train moving?”

“There’s an obstruction on the tracks.”

“What kind of obstruction?”

“I do not know.” Just as Hester hadn’t known five minutes earlier, and ten minutes, and twenty. Hester suspected it was not a trivial obstruction—a downed tree or a dead horse at least—a casual gesture by the hand of fate to make Hester doubt her determination to scurry north and lick her wounds.

“I miss Uncle.”

“I miss him too.”

“You should have stayed with him, Aunt. He’ll miss you and miss you.”

Oh, cruel child. Hester wanted to clap her hand over Fiona’s mouth.

“The train is moving!” Fiona pressed her nose to the window as the locomotive gave another lurch. “We’re moving backward!”

“We are indeed.” Away from Aberdeen, which was maddening, to say the least. “We’ll probably have to find another train to take us north, Fee. The day is likely to become quite long.”

Fiona said nothing, but stood on the seat to get down the carpetbag and peer inside, as she’d done frequently throughout their journey.

“It doesn’t smell very good in there. Harold is unhappy.”

“Then Harold will be relieved to reach home, as will we.”

“But home’s that way.” Fiona jerked her thumb to the north.

Swear words paraded through Hester’s weary brain—nasty, percussive, satisfying Anglo-Saxon monosyllables that would have sounded like music on Tiberius’s tongue.

“I am damned sick of this day, Niece.”

Fiona’s brows arched with surprise. “That was very good, Aunt. May I try?”

They turned the air of the compartment blue on the twenty-mile trip back down to Edinburgh, and shared not a few laughs, but when Hester was told there was no way to reach Aberdeen by nightfall, she wanted to cry.

“We could hire a carriage,” Fiona offered helpfully as they stood outside the busy station in Edinburgh.

“It would still take us days, Fee. We need to find decent accommodations for young ladies temporarily stranded far from home.”

“And a rabbit.” Fee tucked her hand into Hester’s. “Don’t forget Harold.”

Hester did not wrinkle her nose. “I would never forget dear Harold.”

“Uncle has a house here on Princes Street, and a very nice house in the country too. My grandmamma lives here.”

Hester was reminded of Tiberius tucking a folded piece of paper into her reticule when he’d parted from them on the train. “Princes Street, Fiona?”

A short ride by hack took them to the New Town address Tye had given them, and much to Hester’s relief—and probably Harold’s as well—the lady was home.

And she was breathtakingly beautiful.

Tall, stately, with classic features that would not yield much to age, Lady Quinworth also sported flaming hair going golden at her temples.

“Miss Daniels, I’m afraid you have me at something of a loss, but any friend of Tiberius is a friend of mine.” Her smile would warm a Highland winter and only grew more attractive as she turned it on Fiona. “And I am dying to meet this young lady, who I can only hope has also befriended Spathfoy.”

“He’s not my friend, he’s my uncle.”

The marchioness blinked. “Spathfoy is your uncle?”

Hester felt again the sensation of the train pulling out of the station at Newcastle, gathering momentum, and hurtling her at increasing speed in the wrong direction. “I can explain, my lady.”

“I’m sure you can.” Lady Quinworth turned to a waiting footman. “Take the ladies’ things up to the first guest room, Thomas. We’ll want tea with all the trimmings in the family parlor.”

“What about Harold?” Fiona held up the malodorous carpetbag. “He’s ever so tired of traveling too.” She grinned at the marchioness. “Bloody, damned tired.”

“Fiona!”

But the marchioness only smiled. This smile was different, warmer, with a hint of mischief. This smile reminded Hester painfully of Tiberius in a playful mood, and on the lady, it looked dazzling.

“The child no doubt gets her unfortunate vocabulary from her uncle. Come along, ladies, and bring Harold.”

***

Deirdre considered two possibilities. The first was that Tiberius had developed a liaison with a lady fallen on hard times, and the little girl was his love child, which was a fine thing for a mother to be finding out from somebody besides the son responsible.

Except Tiberius would have married the mother; without question he would have.

Which meant this was Gordie’s child. Fiona was old enough, and she had the look of Gordie in her merry eyes and slightly obstinate chin. When the child had been sent off with the housekeeper to enjoy a scented bath, Deirdre considered her remaining guest.

“Now that we are without little ears to mind us, Miss Daniels, I’d like to know how you came to be at Quinworth, and what exactly Spathfoy’s involvement is in that child’s life.”

Miss Daniels—who bore no noticeable resemblance to the child in her care—used the genteel prevarications. She sipped her tea, nibbled a sandwich, then set her tea down. “I believe Fiona is your granddaughter, my lady.”

“Are you her mother?”

“I am not. My brother Matthew is married to Fiona’s mother, Mary Frances MacGregor Daniels, or I suppose she’s Lady Altsax now, though they don’t use the title.”

“You’re
that
Miss Daniels?”

She showed no sign of being discommoded by the question, except for a slight tipping up of her chin. “I am the Miss Daniels who cried off her engagement to Jasper Merriman.”

“Have some more tea.” Deirdre decided the immediate liking she’d felt for the girl had been grounded in solid maternal instinct. “I received the most peculiar epistle from Spathfoy not a week past. I am to ruin young Mr. Merriman socially, to hint he has a dread disease that renders him unacceptable as a marriage prospect for any decent young lady.”

Miss Daniels’s smile was radiant. “That is diabolically clever. You must thank Tiberius for me when you see him next.”

Tiberius?
“You won’t be seeing him yourself?”

The smile died. It did not fade, it died. “I do not think so. I rejected his proposal too, you see.”

“We will discuss that in due course. First, tell me how Fiona came to be in her uncle’s care.”

This necessitated a darting glance at the fat white rabbit reclining like a drunken burgher against the fireplace fender. “Quinworth demanded that Tye bring Fiona to him, though I did not learn this from Tiberius. Lady Joan explained it to me. She said Tye—
Spathfoy
agreed to retrieve Fiona in exchange for Quinworth’s willingness to allow her to live in Paris for a year, and to allow all three of your daughters to marry where they chose.”

“Quinworth devised this bargain?”

“He did, and somehow Tye got him to undevise it where Fee is concerned.”

Tye. She’d slipped more than once, using the earl’s name and even his nickname.

“This is interesting, Miss Daniels.” Deirdre took a leisurely sip of her tea, which had lost much of its heat. “I’d heard rumors Gordie had left us an afterthought, and I pleaded with my husband to follow up, but he was adamant it would be a waste of time.”

Waste of time, indeed. The wrath she’d directed at Hale previously was going to be nothing,
nothing
, compared to the peal she’d ring over his head now.

“I wish you would not be too hard on his lordship, Lady Quinworth. If he has been high-handed in his dealings regarding Fiona, I believe his course was set in part because of the way you have dealt with him.”

Deirdre’s teacup nigh crashed to its saucer. “Explain yourself, Miss Daniels.”

Little Miss Daniels got up and went to the window, turning her back to her hostess. It was a slim back, but straight. Strong. “He keeps all the letters you send back to him—Quinworth does. He has them in a drawer, and they look as if he’s read them time and again.”

Inside her body where she thought she’d long stopped feeling anything of note, Deirdre experienced small tremors of emotion. “What has this to do with me, Miss Daniels?”

“They are love letters, my lady. I read perhaps two sentences of his most recent epistle, and I know a love letter when I’m reading one, though I’ve never received any myself.”

“Love letters? Listing all the things I’ve left behind me in a vain attempt to gain that man’s notice? Those are taunts, Miss Daniels. When you’ve been married to an arrogant, domineering Englishman for thirty years, you’ll know the difference.”

She tried to pick up her teacup, but her grip was too unsteady, and her speech had acquired more than a hint of a burr.

“He’s taken to stealing children in an effort to entice you to return to his side.”

“
He
has
not
.”

Miss Daniels turned to face her hostess. “The Earl of Balfour has sent regular reports to Quinworth regarding Fiona’s well-being, my lady. It’s been years, and Quinworth has never acknowledged the child until now. Fiona is legitimate under Scottish law, and she is a wonderful child. Quinworth sent his son to bring her south, and I am convinced this is all in aid of luring you back to the family seat.”

“He never admitted to me we had a grandchild.” Deirdre’s voice, the melodious, cultured voice she’d been complimented on since she’d put up her hair, came out broken and empty. “That man… I told him there had been a child, and he ignored me and railed at me and told me not to hang onto dreams that could never be. We fought and fought until I could not fight anymore.”

“Your husband compromised his relationship with his only remaining son to get his hands on Fiona.” Miss Daniels had moved again to resume her seat across from Deirdre. “He lied, he sacrificed control of his daughters’ futures, he moved heaven and earth to gain custody of Fiona, and I am certain in my bones it was the only way he could bring himself once again to your notice.”

“He
has
my notice. He has always had my notice. I am tempted to order my traveling coach and take my notice to Quinworth in person this very moment, but I will not pass up the opportunity to spend even a moment with my granddaughter.”

Miss Daniels said nothing. She fixed Deirdre a fresh cup of tea, as if that would help with the mess Deirdre’s marriage had become. As if anything would help.

When Deirdre began to cry, Miss Daniels took the place beside her, tucked a serviette into Deirdre’s hand, and put her arm around Deirdre’s shoulder.

All of which only made the marchioness cry harder.

***

“She’s not coming.” Quinworth spoke quietly, though there was nobody to hear him who’d repeat his words. “The child left more than two weeks ago—the child who might have finally lured your mother home—and still, there is no word from Edinburgh. Not a scathing letter, not a request for a formal separation, nothing.”

He swatted at the grass with his riding crop. “Each day, my boy, I envy you your repose a little more. Your mother would say I’m being petulant and dramatic.”

Quinworth eyed the headstone to which he addressed himself. “I’m being pathetic, but when you are all the family left to me, at least I can indulge myself privately in this regard.” The alternatives did not bear thinking about. Her ladyship was probably halfway to Vienna by now, and if fetching her home from Edinburgh had been a daunting prospect, the Continent was a patent impossibility.

“Your brother has gone off to the north again, though whether he’ll sort matters out with the little blond, or take up the latest family tradition of solitudinous brooding remains to be seen. You used to be able to jolly him out of his seriousness at least occasionally, but then, you did not lie to him about a material matter.”

The child had been good for Spathfoy, though. About that much, Quinworth was certain. The child and the little blond.

“Fiona has your chin, your eyes. You would love her—anybody would love her.” Which wasn’t something he’d bargained for, not at all.

“Hale.”

Quinworth blinked, wondering if he was finally to be granted the mercy of losing his reason. He was even hearing his wife’s voice on the slight summer breeze, a voice that had been silent except in his memory for two years.

Quinworth did not put any stock in summer breezes.

“I miss your mother,” he went on. “I miss her until I am ready to crawl on my knees to beg her forgiveness, but she won’t… she will not acknowledge my letters. She will not see me; she will not hear me; she will not speak to me. To her, I am as dead as you are, perhaps even more so. I fear her sentence in this regard to be irrevocable.”