Chapter Ten #3
Her maid, Poole, welcomed these visits. “You do cheer her up, my lady. The dowager baroness calls you a ray of sunshine.” She set a tea service down so that Diantha could pour.
She turned to her mother-in-law, aghast. “You do not refer to me by such a namby-pamby term, ma’am!”
Quiet chuckles shook the fragile frame. “I could promise not to do so in the future!” Kieran’s impish smile broke out across her face at Diantha’s disgust, and the two women burst out laughing.
A quick knock came on the door, followed by her husband’s voice. “What mischief are you two up to now?” Poole opened the door at once.
His teasing glance took in his mother and the teacup that Diantha helped her to hold. “Allow me.”
As he assisted his mother to drink her tea, Diantha watched him. The same hands that could control a hunter eager to gallop out of the stable yard now delicately helped an old woman ease a porcelain cup to her lips. And she knew only too well the pleasure they could wring from her body.
The three of them enjoyed nearly an hour of conversation before Lady Rossburn’s pain required her to rest.
They walked back to their rooms to change for dinner in silence. Only then did he take her hand to brush his lips along her knuckles. “Doctor Andrews tells me my mother is in better spirits these days. Thank you.”
With those words he disappeared into his room. Diantha stared after him until Florette hurried her inside to change.
One evening, Kieran announced that her riding lessons would start the following morning.
Torn between pleasure at his attentiveness and dismay, Diantha raised her one solid objection. “I don’t have a riding habit.”
“Really, Nephew! You cannot expect a female to drop everything on one of your whims. We shall have to alter one of mine.” Thanks trembled on Diantha’s lips until Iona sniffed. “Of course, if you’d married a female of your own class, none of this would be necessary.”
She subsided under Kieran’s scowl, but even Barclay looked concerned at this gap in her education. Guessing that Iona would have more barbs to deliver after they withdrew, Diantha signaled a footman. “I believe I shall have a second glass of wine this evening, thank you.”
Nevertheless, two days later she emerged from her room attired in an out-of-date riding habit hastily cut down by Florette. Trying to manage the trailing skirt without dropping her riding crop, she walked right into her waiting husband.
“Oof! For a little thing you have a great deal of force.” He stooped to pick up the crop from the floor where she’d dropped it. He was dressed for riding as well.
Diantha beamed at him. “You’re going to come with me? I am so relieved!”
Kieran cleared his throat, looking slightly uncomfortable. “I thought I would at least see you out to the stables.”
She took his arm. “Please promise me you won’t laugh.”
“I promise.”
In the stable yard, he led her up to a burly middle-aged man engaged in chewing out a young groom. She suspected it was just as well the man’s thick burr and Scots dialect precluded her from understanding most of his words.
Kieran let the man rant until he paused for breath. “Archie! I have your new pupil here. Diantha, allow me to present Archie Green, one of our mainstays at Duncarie.”
She observed the leathery Scot as he was introduced. Grizzled waves of red hair stood in disarray above a pair of blue eyes that looked innocent until he scrutinized her for several moments in complete silence.
“Gie me your hands, then.”
Taken aback, Diantha glanced at her husband, then back at the servant. “I beg your pardon?”
He blew an exasperated breath. “Your hands, woman. Let me see them!”
Another glance at Kieran revealed him biting his lip and looking straight ahead. Hesitantly she extended her gloved hands. His callused palms enveloped them in a disconcerting tactile inspection.
Snatching them away, she glared at both men before addressing Green. “What are you doing?”
“How else am I supposed to know how light or heavy your hand is?” He indicated a saddled dapplegray horse tethered to the stable wall. “You dinna think I’m going to risk that poor animal’s mouth with a daftie who canna ride?”
She turned to her husband. “What did he say?”
He struggled to keep his face straight. “He doesn’t want you to hurt the horse.” A grin broke out despite his efforts. “So, Archie. What’s the verdict?”
The middle-aged man shrugged. “No’ bad. She’ll do well enough for Dancer.”
Her husband choked back a laugh as she whirled to face him. Her heart lurched. He had never looked so handsome as he did this instant, giving her a lopsided grin in the middle of a stable yard.
“Well enough, then. I’ll leave you to your lessons, wife.”
In her dismay, she actually clutched his arm before she realized how childish the action was. She released him. “I shall be sorry not to have your company.”
Kieran caught her fingers and gently squeezed them. “I am sorry, but I have some business to tend to on the other side of the estate.”
His face softened and he lifted her hand to brush a kiss across her knuckles. Diantha’s toes curled in her boots. “No need to worry. Archie will keep you safe till I collect you.”
With that, he strolled over to where his chestnut stallion attempted to escape from a harassed groom. Gathering the reins, he easily mounted the horse and cantered out of the yard.
Diantha watched him with a sinking heart. He had no trouble leaving her behind.
“Well? Are ye comin’ or no’?” The impatient question interrupted her musing. She nodded to Archie and followed him toward the dapple-gray.
Given the man’s horse-centered view of the world, she approached her lesson with trepidation, but her fears soon evaporated. Once he finished tsking over the shame of a mistress of Duncarie who couldn’t ride, he set about showing her the basics with great patience.
He did immediately correct her when she asked how long he had worked as a groom.
“I am a ghillie, your ladyship. Grooms only work in the stable, but I am responsible for goings-on all over Rossburn lands.” She cocked her head and he grinned up at her as he led the horse toward a paddock.
“Tha’means I let his lordship know if we need to do a burn on the moor so grouse can feed, or if there’s poachers about.
Or when Mr. Barclay is tryin’ to do somethin’ daft. ”
“So you answer directly to Lord Rossburn? How is it you’re teaching me to ride, then?”
“A ghillie is the laird’s to command. If he says to carry him across a wee bog so his soles dinna get damp, the ghillie does it.”
“How revolting! Surely Lord Rossburn would never demean someone so.”
Archie chuckled. “Weel, if it came to tha’, I might tell Master Kieran to walk on his own legs.”
He lifted his chin. “I taught him to ride when he was a laddie, for the old laird said no one on the estate had my touch wi’ the beasties.
” He stroked Dancer’s wither with an affectionate smile.
“So o’ course the young laird willna trust anyone but me to teach you.
Now sit up straight. You’re a lady, no’ a sack o’ tatties. ”
As soon as they reached the open road, Kieran gave the horse its head. Mefisto broke into a gallop. Only a few clouds scudded across the sky and the passing air carried the scent of sun-warmed juniper. Kieran tried to savor the pleasure of riding his lands after months away.
Unfortunately the hurt expression on Diantha’s face kept rising in his mind’s eye. He admitted to himself that part of the reason for abandoning her to Archie’s brusque, if thorough, tutelage stemmed from her earlier words in the library.
They still stung. Diantha accepted him in her bed out of mere duty?
He had always attracted women easily. Even the most censorious dowagers simpered and preened under his coaxing. Matrons and maidens alike batted their eyelashes or attempted their wittiest sallies when he danced with them.
In return for the pleasure his lovers gave him, he was generous—in bed, at any rate. His deepest emotions he kept off limits to outsiders, of course.
Diantha presented a conundrum. Unlike a mistress, he could not dispense with her presence when his interest in her waned. And he refused to countenance his wife giving herself to another man. The image of her supple curves stretched out on another man’s bed arose.
Mefisto broke stride unexpectedly. He realized he had gripped the reins so tightly that the horse tossed his head in annoyance.
It dawned on him that he had no wish for another woman yet, either. In view of his father’s habits, the knowledge relieved him, but that did not solve his dilemma.
The one woman he could not charm was his own wife.
Scowling, he turned the horse onto a trail leading to an upland moor.
His steward, Johnston, and Archie had both suggested it for the estate’s sheep.
The herd’s normal pasture remained a quagmire after heavy spring rains.
In an effort to preserve the animals and their valuable wool, Barclay had ordered them into the nearest tenant’s field.
Understandably, the cottar resented the loss of his only arable land, and the sheep had to be moved again.
Kieran slowed Mefisto to a walk and examined the moor as he neared it.
The sheep could not stray far, for the only access was across a wooden bridge that spanned a narrow ravine.
Heavy growth covered the pasture and an outcrop of rock at the far end might provide a sheltered spot for a shepherd’s hut.
He urged his mount forward. No sooner did Mefisto’s front hooves strike the planks than the animal shied back. Kieran pressed his knees into the rigid sides, but save for breathing, the animal might have been stone.
“What’s gotten into you?” He dismounted and gathered the reins. After a firm tug, the horse followed on stiff legs, apparently satisfied to let the human go first.