“It’s going to rain, and then I shall get wet and stay wet until we get home. Why isn’t the train moving?”
“There’s an obstruction on the tracks.”
“What kind of obstruction?”
“I do not know.” Just as Hester hadn’t known five minutes earlier, and ten minutes, and twenty. Hester suspected it was not a trivial obstruction—a downed tree or a dead horse at least—a casual gesture by the hand of fate to make Hester doubt her determination to scurry north and lick her wounds.
“I miss Uncle.”
“I miss him too.”
“You should have stayed with him, Aunt. He’ll miss you and miss you.”
Oh, cruel child. Hester wanted to clap her hand over Fiona’s mouth.
“The train is moving!” Fiona pressed her nose to the window as the locomotive gave another lurch. “We’re moving backward!”
“We are indeed.” Away from Aberdeen, which was maddening, to say the least. “We’ll probably have to find another train to take us north, Fee. The day is likely to become quite long.”
Fiona said nothing, but stood on the seat to get down the carpetbag and peer inside, as she’d done frequently throughout their journey.
“It doesn’t smell very good in there. Harold is unhappy.”
“Then Harold will be relieved to reach home, as will we.”
“But home’s that way.” Fiona jerked her thumb to the north.
Swear words paraded through Hester’s weary brain—nasty, percussive, satisfying Anglo-Saxon monosyllables that would have sounded like music on Tiberius’s tongue.
“I am damned sick of this day, Niece.”
Fiona’s brows arched with surprise. “That was very good, Aunt. May I try?”
They turned the air of the compartment blue on the twenty-mile trip back down to Edinburgh, and shared not a few laughs, but when Hester was told there was no way to reach Aberdeen by nightfall, she wanted to cry.
“We could hire a carriage,” Fiona offered helpfully as they stood outside the busy station in Edinburgh.
“It would still take us days, Fee. We need to find decent accommodations for young ladies temporarily stranded far from home.”
“And a rabbit.” Fee tucked her hand into Hester’s. “Don’t forget Harold.”
Hester did not wrinkle her nose. “I would never forget dear Harold.”
“Uncle has a house here on Princes Street, and a very nice house in the country too. My grandmamma lives here.”
Hester was reminded of Tiberius tucking a folded piece of paper into her reticule when he’d parted from them on the train. “Princes Street, Fiona?”
A short ride by hack took them to the New Town address Tye had given them, and much to Hester’s relief— and probably Harold’s as well—the lady was home.
And she was breathtakingly beautiful.
Tall, stately, with classic features that would not yield much to age, Lady Quinworth also sported flaming hair going golden at her temples.
“Miss Daniels, I’m afraid you have me at something of a loss, but any friend of Tiberius is a friend of mine.” Her smile would warm a Highland winter and only grew more attractive as she turned it on Fiona. “And I am dying to meet this young lady, who I can only hope has also befriended Spathfoy.”
“He’s not my friend, he’s my uncle.”
The marchioness blinked. “Spathfoy is your uncle?”
Hester felt again the sensation of the train pulling out of the station at Newcastle, gathering momentum, and hurtling her at increasing speed in the wrong direction. “I can explain, my lady.”
“I’m sure you can.” Lady Quinworth turned to a waiting footman. “Take the ladies’ things up to the first guest room, Thomas. We’ll want tea with all the trimmings in the family parlor.”
“What about Harold?” Fiona held up the malodorous carpetbag. “He’s ever so tired of traveling too.” She grinned at the marchioness. “Bloody, damned tired.”
“Fiona!”
But the marchioness only smiled. This smile was different, warmer, with a hint of mischief. This smile reminded Hester painfully of Tiberius in a playful mood, and on the lady, it looked dazzling.
“The child no doubt gets her unfortunate vocabulary from her uncle. Come along, ladies, and bring Harold.”
Deirdre considered two possibilities. The first was that Tiberius had developed a liaison with a lady fallen on hard times, and the little girl was his love child, which was a fine thing for a mother to be finding out from somebody besides the son responsible.
Except Tiberius would have married the mother; without question he would have.
Which meant this was Gordie’s child. Fiona was old enough, and she had the look of Gordie in her merry eyes and slightly obstinate chin. When the child had been sent off with the housekeeper to enjoy a scented bath, Deirdre considered her remaining guest.
“Now that we are without little ears to mind us, Miss Daniels, I’d like to know how you came to be at Quinworth, and what exactly Spathfoy’s involvement is in that child’s life.”
Miss Daniels—who bore no noticeable resemblance to the child in her care—used the genteel prevarications. She sipped her tea, nibbled a sandwich, then set her tea down. “I believe Fiona is your granddaughter, my lady.”
“Are you her mother?”
“I am not. My brother Matthew is married to Fiona’s mother, Mary Frances MacGregor Daniels, or I suppose she’s Lady Altsax now, though they don’t use the title.”
“You’re
She showed no sign of being discommoded by the question, except for a slight tipping up of her chin. “I am the Miss Daniels who cried off her engagement to Jasper Merriman.”
“Have some more tea.” Deirdre decided the immediate liking she’d felt for the girl had been grounded in solid maternal instinct. “I received the most peculiar epistle from Spathfoy not a week past. I am to ruin young Mr. Merriman socially, to hint he has a dread disease that renders him unacceptable as a marriage prospect for any decent young lady.”
Miss Daniels’s smile was radiant. “That is diabolically clever. You must thank Tiberius for me when you see him next.”
The smile died. It did not fade, it died. “I do not think so. I rejected his proposal too, you see.”
“We will discuss that in due course. First, tell me how Fiona came to be in her uncle’s care.”
This necessitated a darting glance at the fat white rabbit reclining like a drunken burgher against the fireplace fender. “Quinworth demanded that Tye bring Fiona to him, though I did not learn this from Tiberius. Lady Joan explained it to me. She said Tye—
“Quinworth devised this bargain?”
“He did, and somehow Tye got him to undevise it where Fee is concerned.”
Tye. She’d slipped more than once, using the earl’s name and even his nickname.
“This is interesting, Miss Daniels.” Deirdre took a leisurely sip of her tea, which had lost much of its heat. “I’d heard rumors Gordie had left us an afterthought, and I pleaded with my husband to follow up, but he was adamant it would be a waste of time.”
Waste of time, indeed. The wrath she’d directed at Hale previously was going to be nothing,
“I wish you would not be too hard on his lordship, Lady Quinworth. If he has been high-handed in his dealings regarding Fiona, I believe his course was set in part because of the way you have dealt with him.”
