Chapter Six #2
David watched a bird dart out of a stand of trees and tracked it with his eyes as he answered. “I refuse to converse with you if you do not call me David.”
Dina laughed, another sign of too much frivolity and too much wine.
“Controlling as always,” she said with a click of her tongue.
More hair tucking. “Remember when we were children and you made Mary and I call you by your full name—David Kamdyn Frederick Macarthur? If we didn’t use your entire name, you pretended you hadn’t heard us at all. ”
David chuckled. “Mary then insisted on the same consideration, but you wanted to be Loch-Lauren, fairy princess of Brierly Glen.”
Dina had forgotten that part and laughed at the memory. “We were, what, eleven years old when we did that? If I remember right, we played it out for two days before Mary refused to participate and we found some other challenge to bear.”
“I believe we were eleven,” David said. “It was the summer before I went to England for school.”
Dina sobered. “The last summer we had such times together.” She hurried to add, “The three of us.”
After David began school at Eton, his time in Scotland began to dwindle.
He was fourteen when his father died and his mother left Scotland for good, eager for her own friends and family back in England.
He’d come to Mary’s home for a month’s visit during his and Dina’s fifteenth year, but Mary had been twenty years old then, and all she wanted was to talk about the season she’d just finished in London—a topic Dina and David rolled their eyes over a hundred times.
Dina’s grandfather had been in poor health that summer, and she’d been called back to him after only two weeks.
They had not seen each other again until Dina had joined Mary in London, when everything had been different.
“Well then, David,” she began, feeling it a safer course to engage conversation than stay steeped in her own thoughts and memories. “It does seem you have done well for yourself. Do you feel accustomed to the work of a gentleman’s life?”
“If there is sarcasm in this question, I am choosing to ignore it,” he said teasingly.
“It is far more work than I anticipated—land and tenants and falling prices at market.” He blew a breath with full cheeks.
“I am converting a large section of my lands from flax to sheep, and it has required a great deal of adjustment to the overall infrastructure.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
He paused, then looked at her and smiled that light-the-sun smile that made her toes go numb in her scuffed walking boots. “I adore it,” he said, tracing the outline of her face with his gaze as his eyebrows came together.
“Um, I would never want to offer a criticism to a woman,” he said carefully, before lifting a hand to his own head and making a sweeping motion. “Your hair looks rather similar to those nests we would find in the marsh, do you remember?”
Dina’s cheeks flushed as she raised her hands to her head and confirmed that her hair was worse than she had realized.
“Och Brae,” she said as she began removing pins.
David took a step closer and put his cupped hands in front of her.
It took her a moment to remember Mary instructing him on the action when they were young and far enough from their house that her mother would not see her take down her hair.
Dina removed the pins one at a time and dropped them into David’s cupped hands.
Any potential sensuality was lost in the fact that her hair had somehow knotted itself, which took a great deal of scowling and yanking to undo.
David pinched his lips together and looked away.
“If you laugh at me, David Macarthur, I’ll bile yer head.” He clenched his eyes closed and kept his lips tightly sealed while she combed through her hair as best she could and then plaited it in an attempt to contain the mess.
“All right,” she said when she finished. “Hand me those pins.”
He opened his eyes and poured the pins into Mr. Littlefield’s handkerchief she’d tucked into her sleeve.
She twisted the pins inside it and tucked the handkerchief back while pretending not to notice him inspecting her hair.
The red had deepened some in recent years, though it could not properly be called auburn.
It was as thick as ever and now hung down her back in a rope with no tie.
The plait would not last but had to be better than the heap it had been before.
“Shall we continue, Princess Loch-Lauren?”
She glared at him, but he only laughed and led out toward the stones.
David took his hat from his head and ruffled his own hair, allowing the breeze to catch it while he tapped his hat against his thigh.
He was comfortable and easy in his own skin in a way she hadn’t seen when he was with Miss Johansson.
She decided not to think about Miss Johansson or Mr. Littlefield just now.
She wanted to keep her attention on David and David only.
She was quite sure this opportunity to be alone in his company would never happen again.