The Lady Most Willing

“They should call you Byron,” she told him, stroking the star on his forehead. His black ears flicked back and forth, and then, as if in sympathy, he rested his chin on her shoulder. His apple-breath was sweet.

“You just want another apple,” Fiona said, choking back tears. She gave him one and realized she’d come to the end of the horse stalls.

The Duke of Bretton’s carriage had been pulled in through wide doors at the opposite end of the stable. It was so large that the shining black end of the vehicle loomed in the dusky light. She walked around, opened the door, and listlessly held up the lamp, but no reticule was visible.

Another row of stalls, mostly empty, lay opposite those she had just visited. The last, back where she had started, contained an ancient pony. The pony lumbered to her feet as Fiona approached, her belly almost as round as she was long.

A tear slid down Fiona’s cheek, because the self-pity she had sworn not to allow herself wasn’t easily vanquished. She would never have a child, and so never have a pony . . . Still, she made herself stop after one quivering sob. She slipped into the stall with the pony, who ate an apple and promptly lay down in the straw once again.

She hung the lantern safely from a hook on the wall, and then removed her cloak and dropped it in the straw. Finally she sat down and, leaning against the pony’s fat tummy, pulled the cork from her bottle of wine.

The wine was rich and fruity, like the earth in the springtime, if dirt was good to eat. She took another swig. It was peppery too, like . . . like pepper. She peered at the label. It was quite dim in the stable even with the lantern, but she could make out that the wine had come from Italy.

As she upended the bottle again, it came to her: she needn’t stay in Scotland with a father who didn’t care very much for her, and a sister who cared not at all. She had money. No—she had a fortune. She could leave Scotland.

She slowly put down the bottle, the happiness caused by this epiphany exploding in her heart. She would go to Italy and travel to the vineyards. She would buy a little house in the countryside . . . or in Venice . . . or Rome. She needn’t even stay in Italy; she would travel wherever she wished. She need never see an English earl again in her life.

Idea after idea came to her: she would like to see the Parthenon, and a camel, though she had the vague sense they weren’t to be found together. A camel had come through the village in a fair when she was a child. She had never forgotten his long, curled eyelashes, and the way he chewed, thoughtfully, as if he were solving the world’s problems and just not bothering to share the solutions.

Lying there, drinking as she considered the adventures she would have, she began to feel chilled. A bit of a search turned up some horse blankets, and she made a nest with these. Then she curled up and pulled her cloak over herself, fur side down, and resumed her reverie. Only when the bottle was nearly half gone did she come to another epiphany.

She could take a lover. An Italian lover. A man with loopy black curls and golden skin, as far from a pallid, blond earl as could be imagined. “I don’t have any reputation anyway,” she told the pony. “Everybody thinks I did all . . . all that with Dugald. I didn’t. But that doesn’t mean I can’t do as I wish. Maybe I’ll have a child after all.”

The pony twitched her ears encouragingly.

“I will have a child,” Fiona decided, taking another drink. “I’ll tell people I’m a widow. I have more than enough money for the two of us. Who needs Scotland anyway? My father won’t even notice I’m gone.”

Her tiresome conscience had just reminded her that her father likely would notice if his elder daughter never returned, when she became aware of a banging noise coming from the wall next to her stall.

“What’s that?” she asked the pony, who didn’t seem to have an answer. Fiona balled up her fist and thumped back on the wall.

No one answered. “I won’t ever think about him,” Fiona told the pony. “Never, ever, ever.” She looked at her bottle. It was dangerously close to half empty. Tomorrow she’d probably have a “head,” as her father called it.

Never mind; it would pass. Tomorrow she would be planning her trip. There were likely travel guides in Taran’s library. She’d be halfway to Italy before anyone noticed she was gone.

“An’ I’ll never even think of him,” she said, hiccupping as she put the bottle down.

There was a crash as the stable door flew open and bounced off the wall.

“Lords a mercy,” Fiona murmured, huddling deeper into her furry nest. She had just begun to feel sleepy.

Then the door slammed shut, and footsteps stamped down the corridor to the accompaniment of someone cursing a blue streak. An Englishman, she thought, not caring much. Probably the duke’s coachman, coming to check on his horses.

“Fiona!” Her name emerged from the Englishman’s lips in a dark growl that had her eyes springing open.

It wasn’t the coachman.

“What in the bloody hell are you doing here?”