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Authors: Lecia Cornwall

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BOOK: Once Upon a Highland Autumn
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Kit settled into the elegant side chair and sipped his tea, and reached for a cherry tart from the tray the butler proffered—Swift knew they were his favorites. He chewed thoughtfully, and enjoyed the genteel peace and comfort of his home. His home was indeed his castle, and he would not allow himself to be put out of it. Just a few firm rules, and he could rub along well with his sister. He began to imagine companionable walks by the lake, picnics, quiet games of chess in the evening.

The door burst open and a whirlwind flew into the room. Shrieks ripped at the sultry air, and barking, and Swift was overrun and knocked down, taking the tarts with him.

A small bundle landed on Kit’s lap, and he dropped his teacup in order to catch it, and heard the delicate china smash.

A pair of blue eyes gazed up at him. “Hello, Uncle Kit,” said his six-year-old niece with a gap-toothed smile, batting her eyelashes like a seasoned coquette.

“Hello, Molly,” he managed.

Another small pair of hands grasped Molly’s blond curls and tugged. “My turn to sit on Uncle Kit!” Rebecca said.

Molly let out a shriek that made Kit’s eyeballs ache, and dug her fists into the first thing that came to hand, his cravat, in order to keep her seat, not noticing or caring that she was strangling him. Rebecca threw a punch at her sister and missed, her seven-year-old fist connecting with Kit’s jaw instead. His teeth rattled. If little Rebecca failed to grow up and marry well, she might make her fortune as a prizefighter, he thought.

Then Rebecca’s twin sister Rose joined the fray, trying to dislodge Molly by climbing over her. Rose’s elbow caught Kit’s nose, and a small knee went somewhere far more painful than that. Too late, he heard the chair crack beneath him, and he barely had time to throw protective arms around the squirming gaggle of infant harridans before the chair collapsed beneath them. His mother cried out—her concern all for the girls, of course, ignoring the fact that they were bouncing on his lungs and crushing his vital organs. Kit shut his eyes and hoped that his younger brother would prove to be a better earl than himself, and would not find his wedding trip too terribly inconvenienced by Kit’s untimely death.

“Is that a dignified way to greet your nieces?” Arabella asked, and he opened his eyes, forced air into his lungs, and glared up at his sister, who stood over him. “Really, Kit, you do need to grow up. It’s far past time you did. This game is too rough for young ladies.” She clapped her hands. “Girls, go to the nursery at once.”

He wasn’t surprised when his sister’s offspring did not obey. Instead, they began to devour the contents of the tea tray as Swift got slowly to his feet, brushing the worst of the crumbs and crushed cherries from his clothing.

“Swift, perhaps you could bring more tea?” his mother asked. She glanced at the remains of the cherry tarts, covering the butler like bloodstains after a battle. “Once you have changed your clothing, of course.”

Swift merely bowed. “Of course, my lady,” he said with plummy dignity before he picked up the ravaged tea tray and limped toward the door.

“Aren’t the boys with you?” the countess asked her daughter.

Arabella tossed her head. “They’re with Collingwood. He insists they must spend the summer with their tutor, under his supervision—as if I could not supervise them here, or have Kit oversee their lessons. Who better to direct the education of a future earl than another earl?”

“Me?” Kit asked, looking up from his inspection of the remains of the broken chair. No one else took any notice of the splintered wood, or his own dishevelment. He poked gently at his bruised jaw. “I agree with Collingwood. The earl in question should be the boy’s father, not his uncle,” he said, and saw too late the dangerous spark in Arabella’s eyes.

“When you have sons of your own, Christopher Linwood, you will understand.”

There was a crash in the corner, and Kit looked up to see his nieces climbing a shelf of rare books and Chinese porcelain. He wondered if Arabella had come simply because her offspring had demolished her own house, rendering it uninhabitable. He pitied her butler.

As his mother scooped her embroidery supplies out of harm’s way, Kit considered ringing the bell once again, demanding to know where the girls’ nurse was hiding. He pictured the poor woman jabbering incoherently under a stairwell somewhere, overwhelmed by her charges, reduced to a shivering wreck.

“Perhaps their nurse should take them upstairs—” he began diplomatically.

“We’re between nurses,” Arabella interrupted. “My maid has taken charge of them for the time being, but she is unpacking my trunks at present.”

She seemed completely oblivious to the fact that her children were now climbing out the window and escaping into the garden, where there were bees and thorny roses, and a deep pond full of curmudgeonly eels.

He crossed and rang the bell himself. “I shall summon one of the maids,” he said.

“As you will, Kit. It is your home, after all,” Arabella said, and Kit swallowed a moment of deep sympathy for his sister’s husband.

Swift cautiously opened the door and carried in the tea tray once again, his shirt perfect, his hair combed, and the girls squealed. The gracious servant’s eye twitched.

Kit made a silent vow. He would not marry until he had no choice in the matter, and an heir was required. When the time came, he’d select a meek and quiet female, and as a wedding present, he would purchase a sixth property, and house her there, and think of her only when absolutely necessary—and how often could that possibly be?

He beckoned to the butler. “Swift, have my trunks brought down from the attic, and ask my valet to meet me upstairs at once,” he whispered.

He left the next morning for Turnstone Abbey.

 

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

Dundrummie Castle, July 1817

M
egan bit back an oath as yet another pin pricked her skin through the seamstress’s muslin. She sent the woman a sharp look and got down from the stool she was perched on. “It’s too hot for this!” she said. How she’d love to be swimming in the loch at Glenlorne now.

“You must be prepared, Megan,” her mother told her, sitting placidly in her chair, watching the proceedings. Her own gown was perfect, pink and ruffled and cut in the first stare of French fashion. “You have a great deal to learn before we go to London next spring, and you’ll need dozens of gowns.”

“Dozens?” Sorcha gasped, and Megan tried to imagine just how long it might take to be fitted for so many garments.

“Morning gowns, tea gowns, walking dresses, evening gowns, pelisses, bonnets, nightgowns—” the seamstress recited, mumbling over the pins from her mouth.

“First impressions can never be made a second time,” her mother said.

Megan sighed and stood still. She’d promised to spend an hour in the village, visiting the local folk, taking note of their tales, adding them to her growing collection. Not that her mother would understand or approve, of course. Megan told her she was visiting the sick and elderly, taking baskets of food to those in need. That was admirable—English, even—in her mother’s opinion, while collecting clan stories was a pointless pursuit.

“Stand up straight, Margaret,” her mother commanded, using the English name that was just one of the changes she had insisted upon in preparation for going to England. Sorcha and Alanna—Sarah and Alice—looked at her sympathetically, as they waited miserably for their turn for torture by muslin and pins. At least Alanna, just a year younger than Megan, would be right by her older sister’s side come spring, at the same English balls and parties.

“I know you’ve only just arrived, but we must begin as we mean to proceed,” Devorguilla insisted. “There will be a strict schedule. In the mornings, you will meet with the seamstress for fittings. You will, of course, be fitted for a
full
wardrobe when you get to London, but for now a dozen or so new gowns for each of you will do.” She pursed her lips. “I daresay Miss Carruthers, your new companion, and the lady’s maid she’s brought with her, will ensure your hair is properly dressed, and remains that way from now on.”

Megan put a carful hand to her upswept hair, carefully curled and pinned and primped until she felt like screaming. Sorcha clutched her braids as she cast a horrified glance at her sisters’ coiffures. “For the rest of their lives?” she asked. “It takes hours!”

Devorguilla squinted at her youngest daughter, and Megan wished she were still Sorcha’s age. Megan looked out the window wistfully, at the purple heather on the hillside, and the blue sky, and watched an eagle coasting on the warm wind. He could probably see all the way to the sea, to the islands shining in the sunlit waves, to Eacha—

“Margaret McNabb, are you listening?” her mother demanded.

“Of course. We were speaking of hair,” Megan murmured. She thought of the old tale Arran McNabb had told her about the lassie with the lovely hair, and how she used it as a silken snare to capture her true love and rescue him from the arms of a false lass.

“We’ve gone on to dancing,” Alanna murmured.

“Monsieur Le Valle arrived yesterday,” Devorguilla said. “He will teach you to dance. Miss Carruthers will ensure you speak proper English, and know English manners.”

“But surely Caroline can teach us that,” Megan said.

Devorguilla frowned. “I would prefer to oversee your instruction myself. Caroline is married to your brother now, and busy with Glenlorne.”

“She made me promise to write to her every day—I’m to write in English, and she will reply in Gaelic, so we both learn,” Sorcha said, but Devorguilla ignored her.

“Are there other rules, Mama?” Alanna asked.

“We will speak together in English,” Devorguilla said. “And we will dine on English food. I have hired an English cook, and an English butler. Your future English husbands will want to know you can rule over their household with proper grace and dignity.”

English
. Megan had grown to hate the very word in the two days they’d been at Dundrummie.

Would a Scottish husband not expect the same dignity and grace in his wife? Megan knew better than to ask the question aloud. She glanced out the window again, watched the clouds crest the hills and disappear over the other side. Her heart was here, in the Highlands, and no English lord would ever win her away.

Of that, Lady Megan McNabb was very certain.

 

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

K
it woke with a start as something heavy was dropped on the floor above his bed, and a trickle of dust fell on his face. Well, not his
bed
—he’d made do with the aged settee in the study of Turnstone Abbey. The rest of the house was uninhabitable, in various stages of being torn down or built up, plastered, painted, or bricked over. He could not walk from one room to another without ducking under scaffolding and Holland cloth.

He wiped a hand over his face and glared up at the ceiling. He hoped his mother, brother, and sister were all quite comfortable in his homes. He hunched deeper into the blanket, rescued from his coach late last night.

“Mornin’ milord,” said a cheerful worker as he carried a box past the settee, as if it was not an extraordinary thing to find an earl sleeping rough. He hadn’t bothered to knock, but then the doors had been removed to facilitate moving the furniture into this part of the house, and there was nothing to knock on.

“What’s that?” Kit asked, his eyes on the man’s burden. He was about to place the box on the floor, amid the rest of the abbey’s displaced treasures. Paintings leaned against the walls, statues huddled in corners, and tables and cabinets and desks from all over the house were piled high with books and trays, barrels and boxes.

Those boxes were inlaid with ivory, silver, and mother-of-pearl. This one was plain battered leather.

The workman looked down at it. “This? We found it upstairs in the attic, my lord. In the suite of rooms that overlooks the garden. We’re taking the ceiling down today. It had to be moved.”

Kit rose and came forward, wearing the blanket like a custom tailored coat, or so he hoped. The man stared at him anyway. They both looked down at the battered trunk, and Kit bent to read the engraved brass plate on the front, just above the hasp that held the box closed.
Captain Nathaniel Linwood, Cobham’s Dragoons.

“Ancestor of mine,” Kit murmured. He bent and tried to open the hasp but it was rusted fast, or locked.

“I’d best be getting back to work,” the man said, and tugged his forelock and departed back the way he’d come, neither interested nor curious about the old trunk.

“My great-uncle,” Kit informed the portrait that hung above the fireplace, and recalled that the man in the painting would already know that, of course, being Nathaniel’s nephew. He glared down at the mayhem balefully.

Kit had no recollection of Nathaniel Linwood, as he’d died the very year Kit had been born. In fact, Kit bore his great-uncle’s name as his own middle name by way of tribute to the man’s passing. Nathaniel had never married, or left a child, or a fortune, or anything at all as far as Kit knew. He’d been a soldier, the second son of the fourth Earl of Rossington. His name was merely a notation in the family Bible—born 1709, died 1785, soldier.

But here was Nathaniel’s trunk, a scuffed military footlocker that had seen much hard wear. It called up tales of bold adventures, battles, skirmishes, and campaigns in distant lands.

Kit felt a tug of regret. He would have liked to have gone on campaign, if things had been different and he had not inherited the title. He might have gone exploring when his military days were done, had adventures, and traveled. He’d read of such things—sea voyages to strange islands, travelers who crossed deserts with caravans of silk, riding on camels, explorers who dug for ancient treasure in Egypt. He ran his hand over the scarred leather and wondered what adventures Nathaniel might have had, and what he’d left inside the trunk.

Kit tugged at the hasp again, but it refused to budge, and the box remained tight-lipped about whatever secrets it held.

BOOK: Once Upon a Highland Autumn
4.05Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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