Chapter 10
The entire household woke late.
At least the three ladies who had partied for the night. Mya couldn’t say the same about the maids and staff. Hopefully no one noticed Kayden leaving. He had not left until nearly dawn, sneaking away before anyone entered Mya’s room to find him there.
Mya wandered down to breakfast well after noon, to find Eleanora seated at the table and Lottie nowhere to be found. She took a seat across from the other woman, hiding a yawn behind her hand. It had been an amazing night.
“Good morning… or nearly afternoon,” Eleanora said, looking up from the book she had been reading and smiling at Mya. “Did you sleep well?”
“Quite well, actually.” Mya pulled two pieces of toast from the rack and set them on her plate with an egg and a small pile of orange slices. “I think I tired myself out last night.” She glanced around. “Where is Lottie?”
“Lottie is still abed.” Eleanora marked her place in the book and set it aside. “She always sleeps particularly late after parties. Tired, as you say.” She paused to take a bite of toast. “How was your first ball, now that you have had some time to think on it?”
“I enjoyed it. It was nice to go out, and to meet new people.” She wondered if she ought to pry into whatever had happened between Eleanora and Lottie the night before. Would it offend the other woman if she asked? “What of you? Did you enjoy the night?”
Eleanora cut a slice from her sausage, but did not eat it yet. “I did. Though some of the company could have been better.”
“Is that what you were upset about last night?” The words were out before Mya had time to stop them.
Eleanora looked up sharply, eyebrows lifted. “I beg your pardon?”
Mya shrank back a little in her seat, wishing she had decided to leave well enough alone. “I saw you and Lottie last night. In the hall. I did not stay to listen, but you looked as though you were unhappy.”
“Oh.” Eleanora chuckled. “That. I thought you were referring to the ballroom. I would hate to have given our gracious hosts the impression that I did not thoroughly adore their lovely party.”
There was an edge to the words that Mya took to mean Eleanora had not thoroughly adored the ball at all.
“We were discussing Mrs. Auteberry's obvious attempt at a slight. Which I could have taken in better grace, I admit.”
“A slight?”
“You were there, I think, when she introduced me to that English bloke. She knew quite well I would have no interest in dancing with the man. I suppose it is her way of taking some small revenge for my dislike of her, which she seems to have at last picked up on.”
“Is it because he's English?”
Eleanora took a deep breath, and a bite of sausage.
When she had finished chewing, she nodded.
“I am afraid I am not particularly fond of them, after everything they put this country through. Though please take care not to go around repeating that. There are those who would do more than simply take offense at my attitude.”
“I am sorry,” Mya said, surprised Eleanora would take a dislike of someone simply because of where they were from. It didn’t seem like her. “I don’t know much of the history, and did not mean to start an unpleasant breakfast discussion.”
“Not at all.” Eleanora smiled at her. “As you say, you did not know. It is hardly your fault that you do not know the country's history when you cannot even remember your own.” She fell silent then.
Mya wondered if she was going to say anything more. She poured herself a cup of tea, and considered speaking up to change the subject before the silence between them became awkward.
“My family,” Eleanora said finally, “has never been terribly fond of the English.
We fought against them more than once, and paid the price for that too.
After the last rebellion, the English outlawed the kilt and the tartan.
That act has since been repealed, and in recent years Queen Victoria's interest in our clothes has made them not only acceptable, but desirable. Yet those English who flock to flaunt their new fashion do not understand that those things were taken from us. That we have only just begun wearing them again. They have no concept of the Highlands, nor of our way of life. And, in truth, it angers me to see it.”
“It seems a reasonable complaint to me,” Mya said, between bites of egg.
“Of course it does. You are Scottish, whatever forgotten details your history might hold.” She tipped her head slightly to the side, regarding Mya thoughtfully.
“Though your name is Boyle. That was an opposing clan of ours. So your clan and mine did fight on opposite sides in the Jacobite uprisings. But I will not hold that against you.”
She smiled as she said it, and Mya laughed. “I appreciate your generosity, truly.”
Lottie appeared in the doorway of the dining room, wearing a dressing gown and still half asleep, her hair loose. She dropped down into a seat next to Eleanora and served herself a pile of cold fish and toast with eggs.
“It is so nice of you to join us, darling,” Eleanora said, lips curling up at the corners in a fond, amused smile. “I do hope you slept well?”
“If I had slept any better, I think I would have to be dead,” Lottie said. She grinned at Mya. “I think you did not sleep as well as I did. You still look tired. Flushed, but tired all the same.”
That, Mya did not explain, was Kayden's fault. He was quite exhausting. She definitely was sure she wasn’t ready to share that information with her hosts. At least, not yet.
“It was a very long night,” she said instead.
Lottie was too busy eating to answer, and Mya turned to her own food. No one spoke for a short while, all of them thoroughly enjoying their breakfasts. It was surprising how hungry dancing, and other things, could make a person.
One of the maids, entering from the front of the house, broke the quiet.
“Someone here to see you, Miss Boyle,” she said, dipping a curtsy. “Do you wish me to tell them you are still breakfasting?”
“Who is it, Anna?” Lottie asked.
“Lord McGregor, miss,” the maid answered.
Lottie's eyebrows darted toward her hairline. Eleanora did not seem surprised by the news. She took another bite of toast.
“You have to invite him in, then, Mya.”
“I do?”
“Yes,” Lottie said emphatically. “I enjoy having something nice to look at in the morning.”
Eleanora huffed a quiet laugh at that.
“Anna,” Lottie said, turning back to her. “Tell Lord McGregor that he is welcome to join us for breakfast, if he would like.”
The maid hurried off, and Eleanora shook her head. “You are not dressed, Lottie,” she pointed out, with the air of someone who strongly suspected their good advice was going to be ignored.
“He is not here to see me. He is here to see Mya. Mya is dressed.” Lottie took a sip of tea and smiled sweetly at Eleanora. “He will hardly be looking in my direction.”
Mya wasn't so sure about that; she couldn't imagine Lottie with her hair loose around her shoulders and her dressing gown sliding down the curve of one would be an easy thing to ignore. She didn't say so. Eleanora's expression said it quite clearly for the both of them.
The maid returned, with Kayden in tow, and he greeted them all with a bow.
“Please,” Eleanora said. “Do be seated. You are welcome to anything on the table.”
Kayden sat, claiming the seat next to Mya, and took a small bunch of grapes.
“Still suffering the aftereffects of the ball, I see,” he said, giving Lottie a pointed look. He, of course, was impeccably dressed already, and didn't look at all as though he had spent most of the night awake.
“I like to indulge myself after such things,” Lottie said, shrugging. “It is a lovely thing to have a house of your own in which you can do as you please.”
Laughter was her answer to that, and a nod. “Indeed,” Kayden said. “I hope I have not disturbed your indulgence, then, with my presence.”
“Not at all. Though I might ask what your errand is.”
“That,” Kayden said, though they had already been told by the maid, “is to call upon Miss Boyle, in the hopes that she might grant me the pleasure of a walk with her this afternoon.”
Mya glanced at the other women across the table. Eleanora looked like she was trying not to smile. She gave an encouraging little nod. Lottie, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to take her eyes off Kayden.
“I would enjoy that,” Mya answered. “Thank you.”
Lottie laid a hand over her heart, eyes wide. “An unchaperoned walk with a man you only met a fortnight ago? What would your mother say?”
Eleanora hid a laugh in her tea. Mya turned a flat look on Lottie, who just gave her back wide-eyed false innocence.
“Go,” she said, laughing. “Enjoy yourselves while you are young.”
“I don't think you've had enough sleep,” Mya said, shaking her head as she got up from the table. “So I am going to let how odd you are being go for the moment.”
Kayden came around the table and offered his arm to Mya.
She laid her hand in the crook of his elbow, and let him lead her down the steps from the patio to the garden.
They walked together in silence along the paths lined with bluebells, waiting by unspoken mutual agreement until they were outside the earshot of the women at the table to speak.
“I see now,” Kayden said finally, “where you have acquired your attitude.”
Mya laughed. “I think that would be a reasonable assumption had I lived with Lottie for more than two weeks. My 'attitude' is entirely me, I'm afraid. Though I don't doubt that she has encouraged it.”
“Lottie will gleefully encourage any number of things she ought not to.”
“You do not like my attitude?” Mya asked, turning to look up at him as they walked.
“I did not say that.”
Kayden spun them, abruptly, so that Mya had to take a step back off the path, her back against one of the trees that shaded it, and Kayden's body warm against her own.
“I find I'm rather fond of everything about you,” he said, tipping his head down with the words and stealing a languid kiss.
When he stepped back, Mya was reluctant to let him go, her hand lingering against his shoulder until he stepped out of reach and once more gave her his arm.
“You are a flatterer, is what you are,” she said, looking at him from under her eyelashes. “I do not know what prize you think you will receive for such a speech, when I have already taken you to bed.”
“Maybe I would just like to end up in your bed again.”
“Is that so?”
Kayden turned his eyes down to her, and she gave him an expectant look.
“It is so,” he said.
“Hmm. I suppose I shall consider it,” Mya decided gravely. “Though of course in such circumstances, one must also think of—”
She didn’t get to finish. “Mya, look,” Kayden cut in, voice hardly louder than a whisper.
Mya turned to follow the direction of his gaze and found the white stag. It stood on the hill, head lifted, and watched them both with wide, dark eyes.
“I wish I had my gun,” Kayden said. “Look at that rack.”
“What?” Mya spun back to face him, staring. “You can’t kill him.”
“Why ever not? They’re animals. And they make good winter provisions.”
“Because you…” She paused, trying to come up with an answer that would satisfy him. “You just cannot,” she said finally. “It feels wrong. He’s not just a deer. Look at him.”
“I am looking at him,” Kayden said. “And he looks like a deer to me.”
Mya huffed, hooking her arm through Kayden’s and bodily pulling him back toward the house.
“Mya.” He laughed, letting her do it. “I don’t understand. What is the problem?”
She shook her head. “Just trust me on this. You cannot kill him. There’s something special about him. He’s… You can’t do it.”
“Fine,” he said. “I will not, then.” He stopped walking, and Mya was forced to stop with him, turning to look up into his face. “I will not hunt it. I promise.” He brushed a lock of hair back from her face, and Mya leaned into the touch with a sigh.
“Thank you,” she said, feeling a little silly despite the conviction that she had done the right thing. “I know that I can’t really explain it, but it’s important.”
“If it is important to you, it will be important to me.”
She leaned up on her toes and kissed him, and he smiled against her mouth.
“Maybe,” she said when she drew back, “I will let you into my bed again after all.”
His laughter followed them back to the house.