The Marquess's Scottish Bride: A Sweet & Clean Historical Romance (The Chase Brides Book 2) (20 page)

DOWNSTAIRS THE
next morning, Jason looked up from the news sheet he’d spread on the polished wooden table. “Coffee,” he told Mrs. Twentyman. “And…”

He hesitated.

Emerald was still upstairs getting dressed. Though his sister drank chocolate with breakfast, a girl like Emerald might prefer coffee instead. But maybe…

“Chocolate for the lady,” he decided. As Mrs. Twentyman nodded and hurried off, he looked back down to the news sheet and began to scan the articles.

England was receiving New Netherlands in North America in return for sugar-rich Surinam in South America, under terms reached at Breda. Remembering his brother Colin’s secret participation in that treaty with the Dutch, Jason smiled to himself.

A man named Jean Baptiste Denis had succeeded in transferring blood from a lamb into the vein of a boy. Amazing.

And Christopher Wren had—

He looked up when two men sat down at the adjacent table, already deep in conversation.

The ruddy fellow leaned across the table conspiratorially. “Me cousin wrote from Cumberland to say that none other than the famous Emerald MacCallum is in the vicinity.”

She’s not in Cumberland anymore, Jason thought with a smug smile.

“And how does your cousin know that?” The man’s companion, a thin, pale fellow, shook his head. “This Emerald MacCallum is naught but a fetching rumor, to my mind.”

Just what Jason had once thought. He opened his mouth to clear up the confusion, but then thought better of it. No sense making it known he had Emerald in tow, he decided as a serving maid arrived with two steaming tankards.

An unusual maiden like Emerald might be liable to attract an unwanted entourage.

The first man hitched forward. “Me cousin talked to her.”

“Surely you jest.”

“He did. He asked her why she does what she does.” He ran a hand back through reddish-blond hair. “Woman’s got two little children to feed, a boy and a girl, and her husband died, leaving her with a mountain of debt.”

“Emerald MacCallum is a mother?” the thin man mused.

Emerald MacCallum is a mother?
Jason mentally repeated, stunned.

Could that be true? It might explain why she seemed sweeter and more nurturing than he’d expected of a girl who made her living tracking.

But a
mother
? Of two? She claimed she was just seventeen years old! Of course, a girl her age was more than capable of bearing children, but…

“He also said the woman’s over six feet tall. Imagine that.”

Imagine that
, Jason echoed in his head, stifling a laugh. Here she came now, meandering down the stairs, all five-feet-four-inches of her.

Unless, as she kept claiming, she wasn’t Emerald.

His breath caught.

But that was impossible. He’d found her, a Scottish female dressed in men’s clothing, holding a pistol on a wanted outlaw.

As she came closer, the sight of her emerald amulet reassured him. Emerald was fast becoming legend, he decided, and folk always exaggerated legend. Look what they said about William Wallace…seven feet tall, indeed! As absurd as Emerald’s being six feet, and likely off by a similar measure.

“Me cousin said she was kind,” the ruddy fellow added. “He was sufferin’ from the sore throat, and she gave him some strange Scottish herbs and told him to boil them in wine and drink the lot down.”

Now,
that
sounded like the Emerald Jason knew. As she slid into the chair across from him, he resumed breathing.

“HUNGRY?” JASON ASKED,
sliding a tankard in front of Caithren. “I can send it back if you’d like, but I reckoned you’d fancy chocolate over coffee.”

She breathed deep of the sweet steam. “You reckoned well.”

“How is your ankle this morning?”

“Much better.” Cupping the warm drink in both hands, she sipped. “I borrowed your comb. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.” He raised his own tankard. “I paid Mrs. Twentyman for the night rail. Did you pack it like I told you to?”

“Aye. Thank you for that. And for having my clothes laundered and pressed.” She smoothed her hunter green skirt and grinned. “Even if they were tossed over that chair rather haphazardly.”

“My pleasure.” His eyes danced with good humor. My, but he was agreeable this morn. “It was the least I could do since I couldn’t find you new ones.” Sobering, he took a sip of Mrs. Twentyman’s strong brew. “We can reach London in four days if we hurry. I’ve a mind to make it to Stamford by nightfall, but it won’t be easy.” He measured her thoughtfully for a moment. “I want to thank you.”

“For what?” Caithren couldn’t imagine. So far as she could remember, she’d done little but complain.

His lazy smile made her stomach do a flip-flop. “Last night, when I—well…I didn’t mean to wake you with my nightmare, but it was nice to have you there.”

She couldn’t think of anything to say to that. It wasn’t as though she’d had a choice. And it had been nice for her as well, also though
nice
didn’t quite describe the experience.

In truth, she was hard-pressed to summon a word that could.

Her tankard made a swishing noise when she twisted it back and forth. “Who’s Mary?”

“Mary?” He busied himself swallowing his coffee and folding the news sheet.

“You spoke of a Mary in the night.”

“Ah.” An enigmatic glint came into his eyes. “A girl I love.”

“Oh.” She studied her chocolate.

“A young girl, all of five years.”

“Oh!” The rush of relief took her by surprise. “What happened to her in your dream?”

“It’s what happened to her in real life that signifies. Geoffrey Gothard attacked her mother, and Mary got in the way. She still breathed when I left, but she hadn’t awakened. The surgeon said she wouldn’t last the week.”

“By all the saints.”

“Mary was an orphan, abandoned in London’s Great Fire. My brother rescued her, and I found her a home in my village. With the childless Widow Bradford—her husband had died in a mill accident. No fault of mine, but I felt responsible.”

“Why?”

“It was my mill,” he said lightly.

His mill?
Jason was a miller? She wouldn’t have thought so, but then she hadn’t thought at all of how he might earn a living. She’d been too busy being furious with him.

Or, since the wee hours of last night, wondering if he’d kiss her again.

To hide her suddenly burning face, she sipped.

“Mary was bright-eyed and intelligent,” Jason continued. “She loved to laugh. She used to follow me around the village, and sometimes I’d stop by the Bradford house and play with her—”

Cait’s tankard clunked to the table. “Play?” She tried to picture serious-minded Jason on his knees with a small child.

“Yes, play. Backgammon and the like. She’s remarkably good with numbers.”

“You play backgammon?”

“Why does that surprise you?”

She shrugged. “I cannot picture you playing anything.”

“My family plays lots of games. The fellow you’ve seen…he’s not me as I usually am.” He rubbed his smooth upper lip. “When Gothard came into my life—hurt people I cared for…”

“What of the mother?” She ran a fingertip around the rim of her tankard. “Do you love her, as well?”

He drank leisurely, delaying his answer. “No, but I feel responsible for her.” He lowered the tankard, then steepled his fingers and studied her across them. “Why do you care?”

“I’m stuck with you, Jase. I’m trying to puzzle you out.”

A slow smile dawned on his face, and he hadn’t winced at the nickname.

She decided to push her luck a little. “Who
do
you love? Besides Mary?”

“What I’d love right now is breakfast,” he said evasively. “And here it comes.”

And that was that for now, Cait supposed as Mrs. Twentyman set a plate before each of them. But he wouldn’t keep her in the dark now that she’d put her mind to figuring him out. He might think he understood lasses, but he’d never met the likes of her.

Hiding a smile, she watched him begin to eat.

He did love to eat.

Now she just had to figure out the rest.

“TELL ME
another,” Jason said later, after they’d been on the road for hours—miles and miles of flat road that snaked through rich but unchanging farmland. It made a monotonous view that begged for a diversion. Lucky for him, Emerald had proved quite diverting indeed, regaling him with Scottish tales all morning.

“Can we not stop for a while?” She flexed her shoulders uncomfortably. “Is it far still to Grantham?”

“Not too far. One more story.” He tugged playfully on one of her plaits. Even more than the stories themselves, Jason was enjoying the way Emerald recounted them. She seemed swept away, her voice full of fun and adventure rather than hostility and mistrust. “In the sea fairy tale you mentioned mermaids. Do you know a mermaid’s tale?”

She thought for a moment. “Aye. But it’s a sad one.”

“Tell me. By the time you finish we’ll be there and stop for dinner.”

“Very well.” She sighed and shifted on the saddle, a diversion in itself. “In the Land-under-Waves live the mermaids, which we call Maids-of-the-Wave. They are lovely to look at, and their voices are sweet and melodic. Their lower bodies are shaped like the fishes and glitter like salmon in the sun. They have long, coppery hair, and on beautiful days they sit on the rocks and comb it.” She paused. “Unlike me, they have combs.”

Jason laughed. “I’ll buy you a comb before the day is out, I promise. And a Chase promise is not given lightly.”

“I shall hold you to that.”

He didn’t doubt it.

“On moonlit nights,” she continued, “the Maids-of-the-Wave sometimes take off their tails and don pale blue gowns. They can walk on the land then, and they’re fairer than any land-dweller lass.”

“Not fairer than you,” Jason protested.

She shook her head. “If you’re attempting to flatter me, I warn it will get you nowhere.”

“You cannot fault me for trying,” he said smoothly. Was he flirting? He wasn’t ordinarily a flirt.

“Do you want to hear the story?”

“Did I interrupt?” Behind her back, he grinned. “Pray, do go on.”

She cleared her throat. “One moonlit night, a handsome young farmer was walking along the cliffs when he heard the most beautiful voices raised in song. He looked down to see a company of fair lasses, all dressed in pale blue, dancing in a circle around one who was the fairest of the fair. Then he noticed nearby a pile of scaled tails, still wet and glistening in the moonlight. He crept down the rocks, took one, and ran home with it.”

Absently, Jason trailed a finger along the part in Emerald’s hair.

She looked up and back, bumping her head on his chin in the process. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Did I do something?” His eyebrows snapped together. Whatever had possessed him to touch her? Aloud he asked, “What happened next?”

Sending one more puzzled look over her shoulder, she faced forward. “When the mermaids saw the man stealing away, they screamed and ran for their tails. Hurriedly they put them on and jumped into the sea. All except one, the fairest of the fair. Her tail was missing.”

“This
is
sad,” Jason remarked, failing to hide the smile in his voice.

“Hold your tongue,” she admonished. “Now, the young farmer locked the tail in a box and hid the key. Before long, someone came to his door and knocked on it. He opened it to find the most beautiful lass in the land. Tears were pouring from her big blue eyes—” Interrupting herself, she looked up. “That’s the tallest spire I’ve ever seen,” she said, sounding awed.

“St. Wulfram’s,” he told her.

A sight to see, the church seemed a combination of every period of Gothic architecture mixed with traces of Norman and possibly Saxon work. She gawked until he turned onto Grantham’s busy High Street, a distinguished row of modern gray stone buildings interspersed with the occasional old, half-timbered Tudor.

“Now, to find a place to eat,” Jason said. “In the meantime, please do continue your tale. You cannot leave me hanging on the precipice of such tragedy.”

“Very amusing. Now, where was I?” She fussed at her skirts. “Oooh, look at that angel.”