Once Upon a Tartan (17 page)

“Switzerland,” her uncle corrected, loosening the horse’s girth. He ran his stirrups up and brought the reins over the gelding’s neck. “And one might consider adopting a more decorous tone of voice, Fiona, lest you scare the hens off their boxes.”

Fiona let go of Hester’s waist and instead grabbed her hand. “The hens aren’t afraid of me. I pet them, and they let me take their eggs most mornings.”

Spathfoy passed Rowan’s reins off to a stable lad. “You’ve been petting Rowan, so why don’t you hie yourself to the house and wash your hands?”

If Hester had made the suggestion, Fiona would have argued that Rowan was a clean horse and wiping one’s hands on the grass would serve just fine and the house was too far away.

The girl pelted up the garden path, and Spathfoy watched her go.

“Fiona claims my horse enjoys hearing stories.”

Any animal with ears would enjoy hearing the man talk. “She can be about as subtle as a thunderstorm. My thanks for allowing us a morning of peace and quiet in her absence.”

His gaze shifted, taking a visual inventory of Hester. She wore an old high-waisted dress, a floppy straw hat, and gardening gloves.

“I was getting after some of the weeds. Mary Fran has high standards. Aunt Ariadne came out for a bit to supervise.”

“She came out to breathe the scent of heather, which I suspect is the secret to her happy old age. Might I hope luncheon will soon be served? Making up stories can leave a man hungry.”

He winged his arm at her as he spoke, and Hester took it.

“Now that our guest and the household princess have returned, luncheon will appear in not less than thirty minutes.”

They strolled past the very bench where Spathfoy had kissed her the night before. Kissed her and held her in his arms and heard all manner of difficult things from her.

“You should garden more often, Miss Daniels. It puts roses in your cheeks.”

She enjoyed the compliment. Didn’t look for innuendo in it, didn’t suspect it of having false motives. She let his words bring her a smile and then waft away on the gathering breeze.

“I like to dig in the dirt. I hadn’t realized this until my father died and I was practically immured in the Kentish countryside for months. Gardening let me escape my mother’s eye. Did you have to make up stories for Fiona?”

He gestured to a shady bench. “No, actually. Shall we sit?”

The ease of his invitation warmed Hester’s insides agreeably. The morning was still trying to be pretty, though overhead, the clouds were forming into increasingly massive gray banks between shafts of sunshine.

“I told Fiona of her father.”

She hadn’t expected him to say that. He took a seat beside her, the feel of him on the bench comfortable and comforting. “I’m not sure she knows very much about him, my lord. Mary Fran and Gordie were not well acquainted when Fiona was conceived.”

“Gordie wrote to me about Lady Mary Frances. Said he’d encountered a young Scottish goddess.”

This was perhaps a confidence, but more likely a reminiscence. “And did your younger brother encounter goddesses often?”

“He encountered women frequently, not goddesses. Mary Frances hasn’t tarnished his memory for the child. I’m grateful for that.”

And that was neither reminiscence nor confidence, but rather a revelation, probably to him too. “She’s very fair-minded, Mary Fran is. Fiona has some of the same quality.”

“I told her as many flattering stories about her papa as the time allowed. I’d forgotten some of them myself.”

“Was it difficult to speak of your brother?”

They weren’t talking about her, they were talking about him, his family, and his role as an uncle. His willingness to do so was intriguing and suggested a trust in her Hester tried to ignore.

“Yes and no. My parents separated shortly after Gordie’s death. My father’s manner of coping was the proverbial stiff upper lip. His drinking certainly picked up, though.”

She wanted to take his hand. “And how did you cope?”

“Not by writing letters to my only niece about her papa’s brave boyhood exploits. It was some time before I even knew of Fiona’s existence.”

A dodge. Hester was surprised he hadn’t dodged any sooner in this unusual conversation. “What did you do?”

“I managed my sisters. I dealt with the estates, since his lordship seemed disinclined to do aught but ride his hunters over the property at breakneck paces. The solicitors turned to me as well, and there is no putting those fellows off for long when the press of business is upon them. I suspect the year of mourning is very different for men than it is for women.”

“Maybe not. I’m sure Fiona will treasure the stories you gave her. She’ll tell them to her children and to her grandchildren.”

He was silent for a moment, while a fat bee assayed the roses one by one. “I have Gordie’s old journals. Someday, Fiona might want to read them.”

This was a purely selfless thought, one that confirmed Spathfoy was by no means as cool and indifferent to others as his English diction and uncompromising nose might suggest. Hester slipped off her glove, and between them, linked her fingers with his.

“You were good to give Fee those stories. No one else could have done that. They’re the kind of stories my sister will have to tell on me. My parents don’t know those stories, Matthew doesn’t know them.”

“I felt a little guilty for bringing them up.” He did not take his hand from hers, but his gaze was fixed on the distant purple hills and the tall crags beyond them.

“Guilty because you’d forgotten them?”

He gave her an odd look. “That too.” They remained thus, hands linked in a peculiar sort of quiet, until Hester felt a raindrop hit her cheek. Spathfoy dropped his coat around her shoulders and very properly escorted her into the house.

***

Tye was limited to writing letters, because the staff at the telegraph office in Ballater was unlikely to keep the contents of any wires confidential.

And because he was so easily distracted by the sound of Fiona’s little feet thumping down the corridors, or the slow tattoo of Lady Ariadne’s cane, he was limited to writing his letters late at night when the house had finally gone quiet—though even the quiet was a maddening kind of distraction.

Riding with Fiona had been intended to foster the child’s trust, to tantalize her with the pleasures she craved most, and it had likely achieved those ends. It had achieved other ends as well, inconvenient, complicated ends, like making Tye aware of Fiona not as a pawn in the ongoing chess match with his father, but as a child who missed her mother.

Tye’s sisters missed their mother.

Hell,
he
missed his mother.

Fiona’s shameless craving to know more of her father reminded Tye that he was also a man who missed his brother, flawed though the adult fraternal relationship had been. He rose from his desk and went to the window, where a full moon was casting the gardens in silvery shadows. A drink was in order, a nightcap.

Several nightcaps.

He passed through the darkened house quietly, but had to pause at the head of the stairs. A sound disturbed the peace of the old house, a sound from within the walls. He followed that sound into the family wing, pausing outside a closed door.

Lady Ariadne slept downstairs, Miss Hester slept in the guest wing. He tapped on the door. “Child, open this door.”

If anything, the weeping became more distinct. Tye pushed the door open and entered Fiona’s room. She should have been housed on the higher floor, near if not adjoined to the nursery, though with Lady Ariadne downstairs and Miss Daniels on the opposite side of the house, the family wing was almost as isolated as the nursery.

“Fiona, are you hurt?”

“Yes.” She hoo-hoo-hoo’d into her pillow, making Tye regret the impulse that brought him here.

“Is it your foot again?” Stupid question, but he’d ask her a hundred questions to stop her damned racket.

“It’s not my f-foot. I want my mama.”

She threw herself over on her side and sobbed afresh into her pillow. “I want my m-mama, and my papa, and they’re gone, and I don’t even know where Berlin or those other places are!”

“For God’s sake…” He took a seat on the bed. “See here, child. This won’t help.”

God help him, he sounded like his father. More than ever.

“Go away. You’re
mean
, and I don’t have to listen to you.”

Back to that. Tentatively, he reached out a hand and tugged one ratty red braid free from where it was creased along her neck. “Sending me away won’t make your parents come home sooner.”

She lifted her head off the pillow far enough glare at him in the moonlight. “I
know
that, but I
miss
them. They hardly ever write, and I’m stuck here. Uncle Ian and Aunt Augusta never come visit because of that stupid, stinky baby, and they’re supposed to help look after me.”

“Well, I’ve come to look after you. Move over.”

Fiona moved about two inches left. The little bed creaked under his weight as Tye shifted to lean back against the headboard.

He got out his handkerchief. “I went to public school when I was about your age, you know.”

“Is that where you learned to talk like the Wrath of God?”

She allowed him to wipe the tears from her face, then caught his hand and held the handkerchief to her nose while she honked.

“I do not speak like the Wrath of God.” He folded the handkerchief and set it aside. “One doesn’t dare cry in public school. All the fellows will make his life miserable if he does.”

They made the first formers’ lives miserable in any case.

She stirred around in her blankets until, after a sharp little elbow had dug into his ribs, she was budged against Tye’s side. “But you got to go and
see
things, you got to do more than collect eggs and ramble to the burn, and wait for your uncles to come visit.”

“I got to memorize more useless Latin than most children know English. I got my eyes blacked by the older boys. I was punished for things they did, and I missed my bro—”

“You missed my papa. I miss him too.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to say that she couldn’t possibly miss a man she’d never met, but Tye was beginning to get the knack of being not just an uncle, but
her
uncle.

“It’s all right to miss him, Fiona. He would have loved to have known you.”

“Mama says he was handsome.”

This observation held a plea.

“He was damned good looking, and you are not to tattle on me for swearing. I’m stating a simple truth.”

“Uncle Ian says it’s not swearing to call them the damned English or the damned taxes. What did my father look like?”

The same queer feeling he’d experienced out riding with her washed over him again. He knew what his father looked like. He knew what Quinworth sounded like, knew the scent of his cigars, the way he studied his wineglass while the blessing was said over the evening meal.

Fiona knew none of these things regarding her progenitor, and that was arguably Tye’s fault.

“I have a picture of him with me. I’ll show it to you in the morning.”

She bolted to a sitting position. “You have a painting of
my
papa
? I want to see it now. I’ve never seen a picture of him. Does he look like me?”

She was scrambling across Tye as she spoke, digging knees into his shins and bringing to mind more swearing.

“It’s the middle of the night, child. This can wait until morning.”

“He’s my papa. I want to see him now.”

She stood there in her nightgown, a thick red braid coming undone over each shoulder, impending hysterics framing every line of her form. Her lips trembled with it, her shoulders quivered, and her tightly clenched little fists promised a great, noisy outburst in the very next instant.

“Come along then.” He rose off the bed and took her by the hand. “And don’t be complaining to me if you catch your very death, running about at all hours without your slippers.”

“My slippers are under the bed.” She wrenched free of his grasp, darted forth, and held them up.

“Give those to me.” He snatched them from her and knelt to put them on her feet. “You will return to bed when I’ve shown you the portrait, do you understand?”

“Yes, Uncle Tye.” She seized his hand and dragged him toward the door. “I’ll go right to bed, and I won’t bother you again tonight. I won’t bother anybody. In the morning, may I see the picture again?”

She didn’t require an answer. The entire length of the house, she blathered on about her good-looking, handsome papa, who was a brave soldier for Her Majesty and danced so very wonderfully at the regimental ball that Mama let him kiss her, and then they got married.

Kiss
, indeed. But at least Fiona’s mother hadn’t burdened the child with less attractive truths—not yet.

Quinworth might not be so careful of the child’s sensibilities regarding his view of her mother. Tye paused outside his door and looked down at Fiona where she smiled up at him. Trust shone out of her eyes, trust and hope and all manner of things that had Tye dropping her hand and pushing the door open.

“The portrait is in my traveling satchel. Are your hands clean?”

“I took my bath. Aunt Hester would skin me alive if I got my sheets dirty because I skipped my bath.”

Aunt Hester would pat the girl on the head and murmur the mildest reproach. Tye rummaged in his bag and withdrew three small framed pictures. He passed the first one to her. “That’s your papa.”

She snatched it up and brought it to her face. “Why isn’t he smiling?”

“His eyes are smiling, but to have a photograph made, one must sit still for a very long time, and facial expressions are discouraged as a result.”

“You can’t move at all?”

“If you do, it makes the image blurry. I think you can see a resemblance between you and your papa, around the chin and jaw.”

She padded over to his dressing stand and peered at herself in the mirror, then back at the image of her father. “He
is
handsome. Mama wasn’t saying that just to be nice.”

Which suggested the girl suspected her mother had been diplomatic in some other regards. “I have two other pictures you might want to see.” He hadn’t planned to show these to her, but the moment seemed convenient.