“I see,” she murmured. But she didn’t. “Why?”
“Why?” Gregory paused in spreading soft cheese on his bread. “Because. Because that’s what one does. One educates one’s children. Just as your father had you educated and my father had me educated. I can’t see that it did either of us any lasting harm and it keeps them occupied, but if you rather they didn’t—”
“No! No, of course you are right,” she said.
An idea occurred to her. She pondered it a moment. Then, in a voice that shook with fear that her plot might be discovered and she herself exposed as the half-bred monster posing at humanity that she was, she said, “I suppose that it is my duty as their … their stepmother to sit in on their lessons and make sure they are … they are properly attending them?”
“If you wish,” Gregory responded calmly. “Do try the creamed haddock, m’dear. It’s delicious.”
He studied her as he chewed, a frown slowly forming on his face. “Tell me, Lady Fia, do you have a particular modiste you utilize? Because upon our return to London I insist you contact her about creating a new wardrobe for you.” He dabbed at the bits of creamed haddock sticking to his lower lip, beaming munificently.
She blinked at him uneasily. She considered the gowns she now owned far and away sufficient for what her life would be from here on in. “Thank you, sir, but I have no need of more gowns. I’ve a surfeit of gowns, as you will see, for Gunna should soon be arriving with them.”
“Who’s Gunna?” Cora asked.
Fia turned to stare at MacFarlane’s youngest child.
“Your nurse is coming to live here?” Kay’s voice chimed in, drawing Fia’s bemused glance. Kay was Gregory’s nine-year-old son—and heir.
Children. At the dining table. Speaking without first being addressed. None of the few books she’d read made much mention of children, and certainly none of them described a child taking its meal with its parent. Why, even as Carr’s doted-upon daughter, she’d never actually sat down at table with him and his guests.
“Why would you need a nurse?” Kay continued.
“I don’t.”
“Well,” Kay said, “I hope, then, that she’s coming for Cora, because I am too old to have a nurse.”
Fia frowned. “No. She won’t be nurse to either of you.”
“Then why is she coming?” Kay demanded.
“To help me,” Fia said, befuddled at finding herself answering the demanding inquiries of a nine-year-old boy. “Gunna arranges things and sees to things—”
“Ah!” Gregory exhaled. “She’s here to replace Mrs. Osborne as housekeeper! Good. There now, Kay. You have your answer. Please don’t speak anymore. At all.”
“Would you play a game with me after breakfast, Mama?” Cora suddenly asked with suspicious ingenuousness.
Fia set down her fork and looked desperately at Gregory. “The girl called me ‘mama’ again!” she whispered urgently. “Why does she do that? I have asked her at least half a dozen times not to call me that, yet she continues to do so!”
Gregory shrugged. “She’s teasing you.”
Fia went utterly still. Her mouth parted, closed, and parted again. “Teasing me?”
No one had ever teased Fia. No one had come closer than offering a rude double entendre. This was different. The feelings flooding her were indescribable. She sat back in her seat.
No, things had not gone according to plan, but perhaps she could adapt.
Chapter 1
BRAMBLE HOUSE
THE SCOTTISH LOWLANDS
AUTUMN, 1765
Your father is here,” Gunna whispered. She stood in the doorway, looking over her shoulder as if she expected Satan to be behind her. Nothing scared Gunna. At least, Kay MacFarlane thought interestedly, nothing until now.
And Fia, who usually seemed as composed as one of his tutor’s mathematical theorems, flinched. “My father?”
“Aye.” Gunna bit on the tattered scrap of her lower lip. “I could say yer gone.”
Fia’s black skirts rustled as she stood up. “No. I’m only surprised he’s waited this long. The lawyers were here four months ago. Kay and Cora, please stay here with Gunna.”
She disappeared into the interior of the house. Gunna hesitated, fixing both children with a stern glare. Cora hastily closed her open mouth and went back to her needlework.
“You two’d best wait here if ye want to go to bed with blameless bums tonight,” Gunna warned, and hastened after Fia.
“The kitchen,” Cora said, popping to her feet.
“Don’t be such a child, Cora,” Kay chided her. “You can’t mean to eavesdrop. It’s so juvenile. Besides, ’tis nearly dinner. There’ll be so many pots and pans banging around we won’t be able to hear anything anyway.”
Cora gave him a sour look and disappeared. Kay waited a few minutes and then rose. It wouldn’t be right to set Cora a bad example, but he would be a poor excuse for a stepson if he didn’t bother to find out what had upset Fia enough to make her flinch.
He headed down the hall for the servants’ staircase, on his way nabbing a glass goblet from the sideboard in the dining room. The chance reminder of their father caused him a moment of melancholy.
Father had died five months ago. Dead of one too many treacle puddings, or so they said, and was it a wonder? Last time Father had been to Bramble House he’d looked like a prize bull but without any of the bullish parts and naught left but fat and bluster.
The thought saddened Kay, for he remembered Father as stout and solid a man as Bramble House was a manor. He pushed his sadness away. Something important was happening. Though in all the years she’d lived here Fia had never spoken about Lord Carr, Father had more than made up for that oversight.
On his rare visits home he’d been full of tales of his bosom companion, Ronald Merrick, Lord Carr. Fia hadn’t liked that much. Her skin would tauten up and her eyes would grow flat with every mention of Lord Carr’s name. Not that Father had noticed—but then, he hadn’t been a very “noticing” sort.
Upstairs, Kay dropped to his knees and upended the goblet on the bare floorboards. It took him a few tries, but finally he found the best vantage for listening. Fia’s voice, low and throaty as a spring warbler’s, vibrated through the glass.
“—surprised you didn’t have him done away with at once.”
“And play right into your hand, m’dear? I should hope I have more restraint than that. Why, if I had, you’d have inherited a rich estate. You’d have been completely independent. Oh yes, Fia. I knew your plan from the moment I heard you’d ‘eloped.’ ”
“You’re forgetting his children.” Fia’s voice was a bit breathless. “His heirs.”
The man laughed. “You know as well as I that had MacFarlane died when you’d first wed you would have had the management of his estate until the boy came of age. Still, from what I hear you didn’t know about them, did you?
“How that must have pricked! I truly do wish I’d been a fly on the wall at that particular meeting.”