Chapter 6
Six
“I won’t tell on ye if ye won’t tell on me.”
The burr was so thick Augusta could barely make out the words. “I beg your pardon?”
“We won’t tattle, right? Ma would skelp m’ bum something fierce.”
Augusta caught the sense of that, and realized the girl—not an elf, despite fat red braids, a smattering of freckles on a perfect complexion, and a pixie grin—was looking for a conspirator.
“If we walk back to the house together, we will neither of us be seen out alone. Perhaps you were concerned I’d get lost in the woods?”
“Ach, you canna get lost in this wee park.” The child took Augusta’s hand and started back in the direction of the house. “But ye’d best nae be late t’ table.”
“Your ma will skelp m’ bum?”
The child grinned more widely, swinging Augusta’s hand as they moved along. “You’re a grand lady and a guest of the house. Ma says we must show you courtesy because you’re a guest and because your English coin keeps the doddies in their fodder. I love the doddies. I love all the animals.”
“Doddy?”
“Fine beef, the Angus. We have red and black both, but mostly black. Sun is kinder to dark coats in winter. Uncle has a fold of the Highland cattle as well.” She chattered on, about her favorite calf, and Uncle Con let her pick out a pair of heifers to start her own herd, and cows were better than sheep because the sheep forced the crofters out after the ’45.
The child wove a tale of agronomy and English aggression that Augusta suspected was mostly true.
“I’m Augusta,” she interjected when they approached the back terrace. “Who are you?”
“I’m Fiona of Clan MacGregor, daughter of the Lady Mary Fran and that good-looking, poaching Sassenach bastard Gordie Flynn, or that’s what my uncs call my da. Ma says he wasn’t so bad for an Englishman. Everybody poaches, or they used to.”
“I am pleased to meet you Fiona of Clan MacGregor. Can we go walking again sometime soon?”
“Really? You want to walk with me?”
“Why wouldn’t I? It might seem to you like no one could get lost in those woods, but I’m not from around here, and I need a guide if I’m not to be late to breakfast. Your escort was very helpful.”
The child dropped Augusta’s hand and pushed a toe through the pebbles on the garden path. “No, it wasn’t. I’m a pest. Even Uncle Ian sometimes has to tell me to go visit the ponies. Ma says I’m always underfoot, and Uncle Con says I should have been a boy.”
“Who would want to be a boy?” Augusta gave a mock shudder. “They spit and never wash behind their ears and burp and all manner of indelicate things.”
Fiona’s grin disappeared. “My uncs don’t spit.”
“They are gentlemen, but we are ladies. We know how to make cream cakes and knit lovely blankets and how to give the animals all the best names.”
“Yes!” The child spun around with glee, making the gravel crunch beneath her half boot. “Yes! I have to name my cows, and they each had a wee baby, and Uncle Gil never thought up names for any of them. Can I show you my cows?”
Canna shew ye m’ coos?
Augusta had caught the rhythm of the child’s speech and, more significantly, her enthusiasm for the naming task.
“We’ll visit them tomorrow, weather permitting. Naming is important, so you must think about it between then and now. We might take the entire week to find names for all the cows in your herd.”
“Fiona Ursula MacGregor.” The tones were mother-stern, draining the joy from the child’s countenance.
“Good morning, Ma.”
Lady Mary Fran advanced across the terrace, her expression forbidding. “Into the kitchen. You know you’re not to be bothering guests.”
“Yes, Ma.” The girl’s shoulders slumped as she crossed the terrace without another word.
“Please don’t blame Fiona,” Augusta said when the little figure had disappeared into the house. “She didn’t want me to get lost in the woods.”
Mary Fran’s brows knit. “I almost believe you. She’s that tenderhearted, she’d even worry about an Englishwoman.”
“We had a wonderful talk about her cows and the sheep and all manner of things having to do with Balfour.”
Mary Fran’s expression shifted, from guarded to a little bewildered. “I can’t keep a close eye on her, not when we’re entertaining, and the days are so long, and she’s so… she’s quick, haring all over.” She fell silent, her mouth flattening. “You don’t have children.”
“To my sorrow.” Augusta slipped her arm through Mary Fran’s and started toward the house. “If I did have a child, I’d want her to be exactly like Fiona. She reminds me of myself.”
“You?”
Such incredulity, and not the least ill intended.
“I was raised on a large estate, expecting to inherit that property or at least to manage one like it. My mother did not enjoy good health, so it was probably apparent I was going to be an only child. My father took this in stride—he wasn’t burdened by a title—and treated me as his heir, if not his son.
I wandered my summers away much as Fiona seems to.
I knew all the gardeners and shepherds, the gamekeepers, the woodsmen, the dairymen, the tenants, the beekeeper, the stable boys, groundsmen, the goose girl, and the milkmaids—everybody, and they knew me.
Papa took me with him when he rode out, first up before him on his horse, then on a leading line on my own pony. It was a wonderful childhood.”
A happy childhood, one Augusta hadn’t thought about for years.
Mary Fran walked along with her in silence for a few moments then paused.
“Her uncles spoil her. I worry about that. They can’t spoil me, so they spoil her instead.”
“And you spoil them.”
Mary Fran’s smile broke over her face like the sun stealing out from behind a cloud. “Yes. Yes, I do. Every chance I get. And if we don’t get into the house soon, we’ll miss breakfast.”
“You most assuredly will, if you haven’t already.”
They both looked up at that masculine voice to see the Earl of Balfour lounging in the door to the back hallway of the house, looking splendid in his kilt and morning attire.
“And we can’t have that.” He stepped away to allow the ladies to pass before him inside, then accompanied them into the breakfast parlor.
Augusta chose to sit beside Mary Fran rather than take a place near the earl. He was cordial, of course, holding her chair and offering to fill her plate at the sideboard, but Augusta put him off with a few polite words.
He was going to wed Genie. Once again reminding herself of this truth should have brought Augusta a sense of satisfaction at her cousin’s good fortune.
It really should have.
· · ·
“You need to goddamned woo your infernal bride, Brother.” Gil yanked Ian by the arm along the corridor as he spoke.
“I am wooing her.” Or Ian would be if she’d venture out of her room for more than the space of a meal. Her turned ankle had been healing for three days, and still she hid.
“You need to woo her trust, Ian.” Gil pulled him into the family parlor and closed the door.
“What else does a man woo in a prospective bride?”
“You’re not…” Gil ran a hand through blond hair already disheveled. In the past few days, Ian’s brother—his heir—had been oddly silent, taking the place at meals beside Miss Hester, Mrs. Redmond, or Augusta.
That’s Miss Augusta to you, laddie.
She’d been acting peculiarly too, taking herself out sketching with another of the ladies or spending an inordinate amount of time with Fiona. Grieving for her cat, perhaps.
Or avoiding her host.
“What’s amiss, Gilgallon? The ladies have long since lost the ability to overset you.”
“Your intended is dead set against the match, Ian. You need to inspire her confidences.”
“Does she love another?”
Gil’s expression became stricken. “God, I hope not.”
“I’m prepared to observe the same civilities as the next titled gentleman,” Ian said, feeling the weight of a long day, a long week, and a long, lonely future press down on him. “When we’ve a few heirs, she’ll be free to share her affections elsewhere.”
“With Englishmen, Ian? Have you thought about that? We’re brutes in their opinions, and…”
Gil fell silent, which allowed Ian to take in the fatigue in his brother’s eyes, the blister gracing the inside of his right fourth finger, the relative pallor of his complexion.
Drinking and riding at all hours, then. Gil’s recipe for dealing with English under their roof, among other upsets.
“She can dally with Englishmen, Gilgallon, with the stable boys, with you, if that’s what it takes to secure her fortune.
We put on a good show here each summer, and we make some coin.
It keeps us going; it keeps us thinking we’re making progress.
Another blight, a dose of hoof and mouth, a bad market… ”
“I know. I know, Ian.”
“I know too.” Ian reached out and squeezed his brother’s shoulder. “I’ll woo the damned girl until her eyes cross and she lies panting at my booted feet.”
He could too. He hadn’t been applying himself was all. Giving the girl time, letting her settle in… Putting off the inevitable.
“She likes poetry,” Gil said dully. “That sentimental, idle tears, English bastard-fellow. I forget his name.”
“Tennyson. I’ll read her pretty little ears off until the splendor is damned falling on our castle walls.”
“Do that.” Gil looked around the parlor like he’d no clue how they’d arrived there. “I’m going for a ride.”
Ian headed for the library to pick up a volume of Tennyson, walked resolutely past the ladies’ parlor where Augusta—Miss Augusta—had been stitching at something in solitude earlier in the day, and prepared to read his intended’s ears off.
Though if he recalled his Tennyson aright, the menfolk fought themselves to injury and coma, while the princess remained unmoved up in her tower.
Splendor, indeed.
· · ·
The library door crashed on its hinges when the Earl of Balfour disturbed Augusta’s reading.
“I beg your pardon.” He looked disgruntled, like he wasn’t in the mood to beg anything of anybody. “I thought you were in the ladies’ parlor.”