“As I told you, she escaped me last week. She actually managed to run away from me. And she escaped me again yesterday. She moved very fast. I was reaching for her, and then she was in the water, being swept downstream. She’s a strong girl. She pulled herself out, since there was no one else about to do it.”
Sir Lyon wasn’t much impressed. “She’s a female. Find a way to get her. Hold her down so she can’t run away.”
Erickson looked toward the fireplace, its grate empty now, and the painting of Sir Lyon’s great-grandfather, William Thatcher Vallance, hanging above it. He’d been a terrifying old man who had left more bastards in the area than anyone before or since. He said, “When Ian and I were boys, we were always searching every nook and cranny of Kildrummy, trying to find secret passages. We didn’t find any, didn’t see a single ghost. We just got tangled up in a lot of spiderwebs and our boots run over by a battalion of rats. But we did find a very private way into the castle, through a very narrow ivy-covered door that gives onto a private garden just outside the library. The Kildrummy steward, Miles MacNeily, spends a good of time in there, but he is soon to leave, I hear.”
“Yes, he came into an inheritance,” Sir Lyon said. “A good-sized one, I hear. Miles wouldn’t care what you did with Mary Rose, in any case.”
“The odd thing is that I believe he would. I remember he was always asking about her, always seemed to enjoy seeing her. I also remember that he was always very nice to her when she was younger, gave her treats, that sort of thing.” Erickson rose and began pacing back and forth in front of Sir Lyon. He looks heroic, Sir Lyon thought, a very fine-looking young man with clear eyes and a noble brow, possibly even more handsome than poor Ian, who shouldn’t have died stumbling drunk over a cliff. He still didn’t understand how it could have happened. But Ian was long gone now, and how it had happened simply didn’t matter anymore.
What mattered was right here, staring him in the face. Erickson MacPhail, the man who was willing to buy his niece and overlook her unfortunate parentage. And his dearest Donnatella would benefit once she got over her snit. He would take her to Edinburgh, introduce her to every suitable gentleman between the ages of twenty and eighty. She would be fawned over, poetry written to her lovely eyebrows; she would be feted, spoiled rotten. That would make her happy, perhaps even content, once away from her cousin, who had somehow managed to steal Ian away from her. No one could credit it, but it had happened. Sir Lyon had marveled at it. He doubted now that anyone remembered Ian had wanted Mary Rose. No, most folk would think of Mary Rose, see her next to her cousin, and it would be Donnatella who’d lost her betrothed in that dreadful accident. And Donnatella, bless her lovely self, never corrected anyone who showered condolences upon her beautiful head for her Ian’s death. And Donnatella, who surely couldn’t have been involved in Ian’s death.
Sir Lyon said now, “Whatever, Miles MacNeily isn’t important. I suppose you could try your plan. As you know, however, the Griffins have returned and also Lord and Lady Ashburnham, Lord Barthwick’s sister and brother-in-law, have come to visit. What with the servants also hanging about, there are a lot of folk for you to avoid. Do you know how you’re going to get her out of there?”
“Not as yet, but I shall think of something. Time grows short.”
“Aye, it does,” said Sir Lyon. “However, I myself have a few other strategies to try before you attempt it.”
He didn’t see Donnatella standing quietly behind the drawing room door.
Kildrummy Castle
Mary Rose’s voice was as thin as the stem of the yellow rose that sat in a vase atop the mantel when she said, “Do you really think I am kind?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Kind, did you say?”
“Yes, you are the one who said I am kind. I want to know if you really believe it.”
A touch of acrimony, just excellent, and yes, he’d also heard just a tiny thread of hope there as well.
He laughed, he couldn’t help himself. He grabbed her and hugged her tightly. Then he closed his hands around her waist and lifted her above his head. Her hair swirled about her head, falling in a rich red curtain of curls about his face. He breathed in the sweet scent of her, a woman’s unique scent. It had been so very long. He hadn’t forgotten, but since he couldn’t act on such thoughts, he’d shoved them way back to the recesses of his brain and avoided ever going there in his thinking.
Tysen looked up at her, this girl with her wonderful scent, hair so rich and deeply red he wanted to bury his face in it, but now he wasn’t smiling. He looked more serious than a vicar—namely, a man like himself—in a roomful of pickpockets. “Enough is enough, Mary Rose. I will hold you off the ground until you say yes to me.”
Her hands were on his shoulders, her fingers kneading him. “You will truly ask the Harker brothers to give me a racing kitten?”
“I promise. However, they must deem you worthy and responsible. A racing cat requires great commitment, I’ve heard Rohan Carrington say. That means that you must begin to have a better opinion of yourself. If you do not believe yourself worthy, then why should they? Now, why would you ever doubt that you are kind?”
“You are the first person in my life who has ever said that. Why should I attribute something to myself when no one else has?”
“Because I’m telling you to, and since I will be your husband, since I haven’t told an outright lie since I turned eighteen years old, you must trust what I say.”
“What do you mean, you’ve told no outright lie?”
“One must shade the truth a bit on occasion, to avoid wounded feelings. I learned to do that very quickly. That, or one simply keeps quiet. Now, to prove my worthiness to you, if the Harker brothers decide you would make a good mistress, I swear that if the racing kitten upsets Ellis and Monroe, I will not complain. I will not force it to live in the stables.”
He would swear that at that precise moment, he saw a gleam of wickedness in her eyes, a wickedness to match Sinjun in her finest moments. She said, all demure as a nun, “If I say yes, Tysen, will you kiss me again?”
Dear Lord, he thought, and found that all he could do was nod, mute as the village idiot.
“Wait. What if after we are married you discover that you do not like me overmuch?”
“I even like your toes, and that includes the crooked one you must have broken when you were younger.”
Any wickedness was long gone. She looked utterly appalled. Her fingernails dug into his shirt. “You looked at my toes? I mean, why would you look at my toes? No one I know looks at toes. Oh, my goodness, when?”
He kept his voice very matter-of-fact. “I had to wipe you down when you had the fever. No, don’t start twitching. No maidenly yells. There was no one else to do it, Mary Rose. You have not even heard me complain about that, have you? I have not upbraided you for keeping me awake nearly all that night. So you see, I am a good-natured fellow.”
“You saw my broken toe,” she said again, and he would swear that in that instant he’d never seen a more mortified face in his life. “You saw even more than my broken toe.”