Once Upon a Tartan

“But are there rules, Aunt? If a gentleman kisses a lady, is it still forbidden for the lady to kiss the gentleman?”

“Oh, my heavens, child. If a gentleman kisses a lady, he is unquestionably opening the negotiations. He’s hoping she’ll kiss him back.”

Spathfoy had not looked the least bit hopeful.

Hester was saved from explaining as much by Fiona’s arrival. The child skipped into the parlor and plopped down beside Aunt Ree on the sofa.

“Uncle Tye is writing letters. He wouldn’t give me any big words in French, though he was happy enough to give me some in English.”

Aunt Ree smoothed a hand down the remains of one of Fiona’s braids. “We’re practicing our Gaelic, Fiona. We can look up the big English words in the French translation dictionary if that would help.”

Inspiration struck, and Hester didn’t pause to question it. “Maybe Uncle Tye will help you think up some big French words over dinner.”

Fiona sat bolt upright. “I can come to table with Uncle and Aunt and you? I can stay up late and have dessert?”

“If you take a bath and change your pinny, yes, just this once.”

Fiona bounced to her feet. “I must put this in my letter. I’m to dine with company. Mama and Papa will be very proud of me.” She skipped off to the door, stopped, and frowned. “Will Uncle mind if I join you for dinner?”

Aunt Ariadne answered. “Of course, he won’t. What gentleman wouldn’t want to have three lovely ladies all to himself at dinner?”

* * *

Tye had friends who’d served in the Crimea, men who’d gone off to war in great patriotic good spirits only to come home quiet, hollowed-eyed, and often missing body parts. The Russians had developed a type of weapon referred to as a fougasse, though various forms of fougasse had been around for centuries.

A man walking through deep grass would inadvertently step on one of these things and find himself blown to bits without warning.

Dinner loomed before Tye like a field salted with many hidden weapons, each intended to relieve him of some significant asset: his dignity, his composure, his manners, or—in Fiona’s case—his patience.

“I’ve made you a list,” he said. “Not less than ten of the largest words I know in French, and you shall have it after we dine. Now, might we converse about the weather?”

Lady Ariadne presided over the meal with benevolent vagueness. Miss Daniels—he could hardly call her Hester now—limited her contributions to gentle admonitions regarding the child’s deportment, leaving Tye to converse with… his niece.

“Why do people talk about the weather?” Fiona queried. She aimed her question at a piece of braised lamb gracing the end of her fork.

“Eat your food, Fee dear, don’t lecture it.”

The girl popped the meat into her mouth and chewed vigorously.

“I’m just asking,” she said a moment later. “The weather is always there, and we can’t do anything about it, so why bring it up all the time as if it had manners to correct or ideas we could listen to?”

Tye topped off his wine and did the same for the ladies. “I will admit, Fiona, that weather would make a less interesting dinner companion than you, who have both manners to correct and all kinds of unorthodox ideas.”

“What is the French word for un-ortho-ducks, and what does it mean?”

He took another sip of his wine. He was beginning to feel that slight distance between his mind, his emotions, and his bodily awareness, that suggested he’d had rather too many sips of wine.

Lady Ariadne murmured something in Gaelic that Tye did not catch—the child had addled his wits that greatly—and a servant brought Fiona a small glass of wine.

“For your digestion, my dear, but take small sips only, or it could have the opposite of its intended effect.”

The girl took a dainty taste of her libation, showing no ill effects, which was the outside of too much.

Properly reared children did not dine at table with adults.

They did not run roughshod over the dinner conversation.

On this sceptered isle, they did not sip passably good table wine as if it were served to them nightly.

And a proper gentleman did not sit across from a decent young woman and mentally revisit the feel of her unbound hair sliding over his hands like blond silk. He did not watch her mouth when she drank her wine. He did not wonder if she would cosh him on his head if he attempted to kiss her again.

The longest meal of Tye’s life ended when Lady Ariadne pushed to her feet. “If you young people will excuse me, I’ll retire to my rooms and leave you to turn Fee loose for a gambol in the garden. Fiona, I am very proud of you, my dear. Your manners are impressive, and we will work on your conversation. Fetch me my cane and wish me sweet dreams.”

Fiona scrambled out of her chair to retrieve her great-aunt’s cane from where it was propped near the door. “Thank you, Aunt. Good night, sweet dreams, sleep well, I love you.”

Tye rose, thinking this reply had the sound of an oft-repeated litany, one that put a damper on the irritation he’d been nursing through the meal. He frowned down at Lady Ariadne.

“Shall I escort you, my lady? I’m sure Miss Daniels can see the child to the gardens.”

“No, thank you, my lord. Until breakfast, my dears.”

She tottered off, leaving an odd silence in her wake.

“Aunt is very old,” Fiona said. “It’s easy to love old people, because they’re so nice.”

“It’s easy to love you,” Miss Daniels said, “because you’re very kind as well, and you made such an effort to be agreeable at table tonight. My lord, please don’t feel compelled to accompany us. Fiona and I are accustomed to rambling in our own gardens without escort.”

Except they weren’t her gardens. If she’d taken his arm quietly, without comment, he might have let her excuse him at the main staircase, but she had to intimate he was not welcome.

“I would be delighted to join you for a stroll among the roses, and I have to agree. Fiona acquitted herself admirably, considering her tender years.”

He winged his arm at Miss Daniels, half expecting—half wishing for—an argument.

She placed her bare hand on his sleeve. “Come along, Fiona, the light won’t last much longer, and you’ve stayed up quite late as it is.”

They made a slow progress through the house and out onto the back terrace. With the scent of lemon verbena wafting through his nose, Tye came to two realizations, neither of which helped settle his meal.

First, when he kissed a woman, it was usually a pleasant moment, and possibly a prelude to some copulatory pleasant moments, but the kiss itself did not linger in his awareness. Kissing was a means to an end, a means he was happy enough to bypass if the lady perceived and shared a willingness to proceed to the end.

With Hester Daniels, the kiss itself had been his goal. He’d wanted to get his mouth on hers, and yes, he’d wanted more than that from her too. What had irritated him over dinner was not the child’s chattering, or her forwardness. It was not the paucity of adult conversation or the unpretentious quality of the place settings or the simplicity of the food itself.

What irritated him was the memory of that kiss, lingering in his awareness like some upset or shining moment—he wasn’t sure which. He’d enjoyed that kiss tremendously.

The second realization was no more comforting: he should not kiss Hester Daniels again, no matter how much he might want to.

And he did want to. Very much.

* * *

“Aunt Ariadne insists I owe you no apology, but I’m proffering one nonetheless.”

Hester watched as Fiona went from rose to rose, sniffing each one. The end of her nose would be dusted with pollen at the rate she was making her olfactory inventory.

“An apology?” Sitting beside Hester, Spathfoy stretched out long legs and crossed them at the ankles. He’d been his usual self at dinner, both mannerly and somehow unapproachable, patient with Fiona, solicitous of Aunt