Tell him you understand, Emmie’s conscience bellowed. Tell him he’s not wrong, though you are disappointed to agree with his conclusions. Tell him again that you love him.
“I must think about this,” she said, making straight for the privacy screen. “I must… I simply assumed that you would write more of those wonderful stories. But then, I assumed Lord Hercules cared for me. I assumed my settlements were a secondary consideration for him. I assumed—however briefly—that you were a particularly fashionable curate, and I further assumed I could adjust to becoming a duchess.”
Dunfallon folded his arms over the top of the privacy screen, all lazy masculine grace and bare, broad shoulders.
“Emmie, please don’t turn a minor misunderstanding into some great drama. You appreciate my stories, and I’m glad you do, but there’s more to me now than little feline fables. Of necessity, there must be.”
Emmie regarded her reflection, a rosy, rumpled version of herself who had been having a delightful time in the sky-blue bed with her intended.
Meet him halfway, you henwit. Don’t storm off in high dudgeon.
“You are attempting patient reason with me, Dunfallon.” She was attempting patient reason with herself, too, and failing to achieve the desired result.
“Forgive me if I appeal to logic, Emmie, but I grasp how much I ask of you when I invite you to be my wife. Even if we refuse most invitations, we will still be subjected to interminable court functions, formal dinners, endless processions of guests during shooting season, most of whom we cannot in any capacity regard as friends. Gossip about infidelities neither of us has committed, fawning from sycophants who can’t even bother to be witty.”
This recitation turned his expression bleak and suggested to Emmie that, in some ways, Dunfallon was still the lonely, bewildered youth who’d been sent off to learn the manly art of patriotic slaughter in Spain.
“Doubts on your part are only to be expected,” he said, straightening, “but please don’t drag my adolescent literary rebellion into the affray. To be very honest, it’s not that I refuse to write more stories, it’s that I cannot.”
“Of course you can.”
He wandered away, probably to put on a shirt and breeches, and that… that disappointed Emmie. They were having a proper row—one she’d started—and clothing was a sort of armor worn in the marital lists. She used some chilly wash water, then wiggled her corset on over her chemise and brought the strings to the front for the usual maiden-lady compromise between fashion and pragmatism.
“Let me do that,” Dunfallon said, prowling around the screen, fully attired save for his coat. “When you are my duchess, I will perform this courtesy frequently, and while we are airing opinions, you need to know that I am an enthusiastic appreciator of the natural female shape.”
He laced her up with just the right touch of snugness and then held her dress over her head. Because of his superior height, he could work the garment down in tidy stages. Emmie was soon fully clothed, though her hair needed attention.
“Please have a seat at the vanity,” he said. “I can manage a chignon, and not because I’ve enjoyed a string of exotic mistresses. My older sister liked for me to brush out her hair when I was quite small.”
Emmie perched on the vanity stool. “As a bachelor duke, exotic mistresses were your due.”
“Do I take from your tone that a married duke isn’t to indulge in such frolics?”
“You absolutely do.”
“Good,” he replied, undoing her braid, “because I have no intention of being a fashionable husband in that regard. I proposed to you because I esteem you, Emmie. I esteem your integrity and your character. I’m sorry the afternoon hasn’t gone as planned. I’m glad we can be honest with each other.”
He esteemed her. Not long ago, he’d said he loved her, and the difference in the words wasn’t half so troubling as the difference in the tone with which he’d spoken them.
“In the spirit of honesty, Your Grace, you need to know that I am disappointed in your decision to stop writing for the children.” To turn his back on the part of him that had first captured Emmie’s heart, and that she’d been so sure would make them close companions as well as a devoted couple.
He wielded the brush with competence and care. No lingering caresses, no little pauses for kisses or whispered endearments.
And that is my fault.
“In the course of a long and loving marriage, my dearest, I’m sure we will weather occasional disappointments, but we will remain allies and friends.” He separated her hair into three skeins and began a braid that curled over her right shoulder.
“Your parents were not friends or allies?”
Dunfallon paused in his plaiting. “I hardly recall. Mama had presented Papa with an heir and two spares, though she’d had the bad form to start off with my older sister. The duchess had earned a certain measure of independence. When I was eight, she died of a lung fever, and I have few memories of her before that. Her death did not change life at the castle all that much.”
He resumed braiding, and Emmie was assailed by the urge to cry. Nobody had read stories to the youngest Dunfallon son, that was certain.
“You think your kitten tales don’t matter,” Emmie said, “but they do.”
“They are pleasant little bagatelles useful for sending children docilely to sleep when a tired parent reaches the end of the day.” He plucked the hair ribbon off the vanity and tied a secure knot. “I do not flatter myself that I accomplished more than that. Are we still engaged, Emmie?”
He began fashioning a bun at her nape, as briskly as if he were her usual coiffeur and she preparing for yet another evening entertainment.
“Why wouldn’t we be?”
“Because you are disappointed in me.”
While Dunfallon silently pinned her hair into a bun, Emmie considered that proposition. “It’s worse than that. I am bewildered by you.” And to some extent by herself, because he was right. She was making drama out of proportion to the moment, but she was also genuinely stunned that he’d belittle his own creations.
He finished and stood behind her with his hands on her shoulders. “Can you explain your bewilderment?”
To pose a question rather than make a demand had doubtless cost him some pride. Emmie realized her pride was also involved, if not the driving force behind this whole altercation.
Pride had a place in marriage, but arrogance did not, and she owed Dunfallon honesty—his word.
“Books saved my life, Your Grace. I had no desire at all to be launched into Society, but Aunt insisted that marrying was my first responsibility when my brother and I emerged from mourning. She explained that if I was mooning about the ancestral pile, the most desirable parties would pass over Ambrose because his sister already held the reins at the family seat. Getting leg-shackled was to be my salvation and my duty.”
Dunfallon took a seat on the chest at the foot of the bed, and Emmie turned on the stool to face him.
“And you failed at that duty for five years?” he said.
“Failed miserably. I was the butt of jokes, the subject of wagers. I was the despair of my aunt and handed around from one modiste and milliner to another. All of them attempted outlandish experiments in an effort to cast me as an original. They turned me into a freak. One of them insisted that I be laced so tightly I fainted at Lady Dandridge’s Venetian breakfast, and the talk only grew worse from there.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I do not want your pity. I want your understanding—your comprehension.”
Something cool and wary came into his gaze. “Go on.”
“In all these years,” Emmie said, “the years of mourning, the years of social tribulation, the years since my only other suitor tossed me over, I’ve had the consolation and inspiration of books. Not only fiction, Dunfallon. I’ve read Mary Wollstonecraft, despite the scurrilous drivel her late husband heaped on her memory. I’ve read Sir William Blackstone’s commentaries on many aspects of the law. I’ve read poetry and travelogues and fables and novels.”
“You are a bluestocking. I like this about you. I enjoy good literature too.”
Despair joined the bewilderment wrapped around Emmie’s heart. “I owe my life to books, Dunfallon, and I mean those words in their least flattering sense. When Lord Hercules threw me over and then put it about that the fault had been mine, I ran out of fortitude. I stopped eating. I stopped going out. I would not receive the visitors who came to tour the ruins of my life. I lay in bed by the day and the week, and I longed to die.”
“You? And your brother allowed this?”
“I lived with my aunt, and Ambrose and I had grown apart. There was no allowing, Dunfallon. Even a duke cannot force a woman to eat, to care about a life that proved over and over that she was a failure at everything.”
He looked genuinely puzzled, and as if he was perhaps resisting the urge to argue. “You were in a bad way.”
“And you are being kind. I was a wreck, but Aunt insisted I leave my rooms at least often enough for the maids to clean. I sought refuge in her library, and Aunt is well-read. That’s where I found Wollstonecraft, who paints a very different picture of polite society’s treatment of women than I’d been raised to understand. I found Mrs. Burney, who in her fashion said the same things Mrs. Wollstonecraft had said. I found that rascal Lord Rochester, and despite all, his vulgar, clever poetry made me laugh. I found Mr. Dingle’s stories and his unrelenting faith that there is always a way home, if only we are resourceful and true to ourselves and to our loved ones.”
Emmie stopped speaking rather than descend into ranting. The bleak eternity after her broken engagement had piled in on top of mourning, loneliness, homesickness, and that terrible row with Ambrose, and the only beacon of joy in the whole gloomy heap had been books.
And most of those, according to Dunfallon, had been silly little stories. He did not understand, and of all people, he should.
“Don’t cry, Emmie, please don’t…” Dunfallon passed her a handkerchief redolent of that majestic-forest scent Emmie associated with him. “Please don’t… Your tears break my heart.”
“Those little feline fables,” she said in a low, determined voice, “gave me a way home when I had no home, when all of me, not only my heart, was broken. You belittle and malign those stories at your peril, Dunfallon—you break my heart—and you turn your back on the ability to write more of them when I know how very, very important such stories are.”
He rose and drew her to her feet and then into his arms. “You are important to me,” he said. “I am so sorry that life brought you that low.”
Emmie allowed herself to rest against him, because this recitation, this argument, had conjured too vivid a recollection of that old seductive darkness and despair. Safety and sanity had been rebuilt one book at a time, one outing to the quiet order of the library at a time.
Then had come the magical day when Emmie had attempted to write a story of her own.
“Life brings many of us low, Dunfallon. Illness, misfortune, broken hearts, a ducal ass for a father, and we can bear it if we’re not alone and if we can find a way home. I did, you did. That matters.”
He’d asked her a question: Were they still engaged? Emmie wanted to say yes, to say that this painful discussion had brought them closer, and they were more engaged than ever. But if intrepid kittens were no longer on his schedule, that left only the busy duke to become her husband.
The busy duke, along with carpets, wallpaper, appointments, curtains, and—heaven help her—formal occasions of state.
Emmie remained silent in Dunfallon’s embrace, weary to her soul. The man who’d read stories to small children, who had written those stories, and who had patiently hung greenery over the library door, had been a passing ghost. A figment of Emmie’s imagination and Dunfallon’s holiday sentiments. The duke himself did not love books—he enjoyed good literature.
She feared very much that she and His Grace, as lovely and dear as he was, would not suit.
“So how did you leave it wi’ yer lassie?” MacAlpin asked, passing Dunfallon a wee dram.
“Awkwardly. I kissed her cheek, and she suffered my attention before bidding me good day.” The memory stung, but not nearly as hard as the memory of Emmie recounting her worst, lowest moments. Years of grief, Society’s cruelty, and loneliness had reduced a lioness to lurking in her lair with only her miseries—and some books—for company.
“What the hell is wrong with her brother, MacAlpin? Where was his handsome young lordship when his sister needed a strong arm to lean upon?”
MacAlpin lowered his considerable bulk into the opposite wing chair. This study had been crated up, down to the last quill pen and ink pot, and carted from Perthshire to Oxford and then to London. The chairs were familiar, as was the portrait of the mighty stag on his misty Highland crag.
So, too, was the sense that Dunfallon had come to this place to sort out a life that baffled him, though his last visit to MacAlpin’s study had been prior to his departure for Spain. In recent years, he and MacAlpin met for dinner at MacAlpin’s literary club or strolled amiably in the park on sunny mornings. They even took tea in Mrs. Mac’s parlor.
At some point, they had stopped conferring over Dunfallon whiskies in MacAlpin’s masculine sanctuary.
“And just how useful were you to your sister?” MacAlpin asked. “Her ladyship had a hard road, and she also lost her mama too soon.”
“Slàinte.” Dunfallon took a diplomatic sip of very smooth whisky. Her ladyship was eight years his senior, a law unto herself, and had been determined to quit the castle on the arm of the first remotely eligible suitor.
Which she had done, much to her youngest brother’s heartbroken dismay.
“I was a boy,” Dunfallon muttered. “Lord Threadham is a peer of the realm.”
“Whose sister you intend to marry, without bothering to discuss the matter with him.”
MacAlpin had many fine qualities, from a hearty singing voice to a fine sense of humor. He was patience personified around fidgety boys, and he could quote Shakespeare by the scene. At some point during Dunfallon’s university education, MacAlpin, accompanying him as his personal tutor, had also acquired the credentials of a prosy old bore.
Since that time, his hair had turned snow-white, his beard had become luxuriant, and his eyes—if anything—more blue.
“You have attained curmudgeonhood, MacAlpin.”
“Oh, aye. Mrs. MacAlpin beat me past the post in that regard, but she does set me a fine example. What will you do about your duchess, lad?”
“She’s not my duchess yet.” And some traitorous, logical part of Dunfallon wondered if that was for the best. A peer of the realm, a duke, fifty-ninth in line for the throne—or maybe sixty-eighth or seventy-third—did not sit about on his backside spinning fanciful tales for children. “I know she’s begun to harbor doubts of the you-do-me-great-honor variety.”
“Miss Armstrong was cast aside once before, you know.” MacAlpin lifted his glass. “Slàinte mhath.”
“The gossips put the boot on the other foot,” Dunfallon said, “though you have the right of it. Lord Hercules treated her cruelly, and dealt a final blow to her spirits after years of buffeting. He treats a woman—a tender-hearted, valiant woman, a lady worth more than rubies—as if she were the party found wanting.”
“You’re listening to gossips now, laddie?”
“They will insist on gossiping where I can hear them. I paid this call so I might listen to you. As much as I esteem my intended, I cannot allow Emmie to begin our marriage ordering me about.”
MacAlpin nosed his glass and peered at the exposed ceiling beams. “Of course not, Lord Tertius.”
“I haven’t been Lord Tertius for ages.”
Which was, of course, the point. Lord Tertius had had a ducal martinet for a father, few friends beyond his horse and MacAlpin’s cats, and little ability to change his circumstances.
“I don’t intend to order Emmie about either, if that makes a difference.”
“Prudent of you. Mrs. Mac is always vastly entertained when I get to putting on airs. My strutting and snorting has her in a fine humor for days, though I can’t say sleeping on yonder couch does much for my lumbago.”
Usually, when MacAlpin was at his most vexatious, he was also at his most wise. Dunfallon had taken years to figure that out.
MacAlpin was being very vexatious.
“The stories I wrote can be excused as a youthful flight, the passing fancy of one not yet in line to inherit.”
“You were always in line to inherit. Kevin was reckless and Secondus sickly. The old duke couldn’t control his heir and couldn’t cure his spare, so he whaled away on you all the harder. His version of preparing you for the title, I suppose. Fatherly devotion, however misguided. He would not listen to me, of course. No reasoning with a desperate duke.”
Oh, that was subtle. “Dùin do bheul, MacAlpin.”
“I’ll no’ be shuttin’ my mouth until I’ve had my say, Your Dunderheadedness.”
“I am all ears, hoping to nourish my flagging spirits with the ambrosia of your wisdom, also with some decent whisky.”
“Then finish your whisky and heed me. Your stories are fine little tales.”
Dunfallon waved a hand, though from MacAlpin that was high praise.
“They are also damned clever, because they said all the things your father could not hear. You were ready to enlist—to bloody enlist with the common soldiers, to take ship, to steal away with the traveling people—anything to escape your father’s control. You know what it is to be much buffeted, laddie. You wrote your stories for all the folk out there feeling much buffeted, and you wrote them because you hurt like hell.”
“I hurt worse in Spain.” Too late, Dunfallon realized that he had not argued MacAlpin’s assertion that the stories were more than passing amusements from a rebellious youth.
“No, you did not. The suffering in Spain was universal. The bitter cold, the violence, the blistering heat. Mr. Dingle’s suffering was personal. Different business altogether.” MacAlpin rose by slow heaves to fetch the decanter. “Goddamned winter is hell on an old man’s bones.”
Dunfallon had ever enjoyed his tutor’s colorful language, though he’d also taken for granted that MacAlpin would always be there, always have a welcome for him, and a kind, if gruff, word. Watching the old man navigate around his sanctum brought a stab of sadness.
MacAlpin would not live forever, and then how would Lord Tertius, His Grace of Dunfallon, or Mr. Damned Dingle find his way home?
“You think I should resume writing, but, Mac, what would I write? I haven’t had a decent story idea for years. Nothing I could come up with now would be any good.”
“True. Everybody would laugh at you, assuming they learned of your pathetic little hobby.”
Papa had called Dunfallon’s writing a pathetic little hobby. “I could kick you.”
“I can be fast when I have to be, and you, apparently, can still be quite slow. More whisky?”
“No, thank you, though I appreciate the hospitality. If I do marry Emmie, will you stand up with me?”
“Mrs. MacAlpin would be horrified if I were to so far forget my humble station. Get that giant earl fella to stand up with you. He’s a decent sort.”
“He will dwarf me at the altar, while you, in your Highland finery, will make a very fine picture.”
“We’ll see what Missus thinks on the matter, but from what you’ve said, the nuptials are in doubt. I rather admire a young lady who can see past the duke to the man, and to the boy the man used to be. Shows discernment. Too many young people today lack discernment.”
“Please, MacAlpin, not the young-people-today tirade.”
Dunfallon’s host waggled the decanter in an admonitory fashion. “Be off with ye, lad. Stop by the stable to look in on wee Caspar before ye go. He’s my favorite kind of boy—bright, stubborn, and determined. Missus adores him, and she has discernment by the barge-load. Witness, she married me.”
Emmie adored Caspar, too, but did Emmie adore her intended? Dunfallon hoped she did, because he still very much adored her, which just made the whole situation hopelessly complicated.
“I’m for the stable, and you will give my love to Mrs. MacAlpin, please.”
“Take on that fraught task yourself, my boy. She’s in her parlor, knitting socks or spinning the fate of dukes. If you’re thinking of scurrying off to the castle after the young lady dumps you, at least look in on us before your blow retreat.”
“Dumps me?”
“Like a load of wrinkled ducal linen.” MacAlpin raised his glass, winked, and downed the whole.
I am being dismissed. The experience had become novel, but Dunfallon bowed and took his leave like the good boy he’d once been. He made his obeisance before Mrs. MacAlpin, who insisted on sending him on his way with a packet of shortbread.
The day was bitterly cold and gray, though Dunfallon was in no hurry to return to the correspondence, ledgers, reports, and bills awaiting him in his bachelor quarters. The ever-so-important matters on which he squandered the bulk of his days.
Looking in on the boy would be a far better use of his time, and to blazes with the account books.
Dunfallon let himself through MacAlpin’s back gate, crossed the alley, and entered the little stable that housed Mrs. MacAlpin’s cart pony and Mac’s old riding horse. They shared a roomy stall, the pony clearly the head of the household.
A few hens roosted in the rafters. A pair of nanny goats curled on a pile of straw in the second stall and chewed their cuds contently. The air was scented with hay, livestock, and leather, and while far from cozy, the stable had a snug feel.
Something about a stable in winter would always appeal to Dunfallon. He’d sought refuge in his father’s stables, and at school, he’d often…
A twitch of movement caught his eye. Something white and furry slipped out from between the pony’s hooves and leaped through the bars of the hayrack. A feline wound itself around Dunfallon’s boots, purring madly.
“You’re a friendly old thing.”
She peered up at him out of jade-green eyes and slowly blinked. Not a young cat, a bit plump and saggy. A dowager queen. Dunfallon knelt to offer the requisite scratch about the ears, and the cat launched herself at his chest.
A shivery feeling passed over him as she grazed her cheek against his chin. “Jewel?” How many green-eyed white cats could MacAlpin own? “Are you my old Jewel?”
She licked his chin and tried to nuzzle her way inside his greatcoat. The shivery feeling turned to joy out of all proportion to the moment. Jewel had been a snuggler as a kitten and as a young lady. She’d outgrown such undignified behavior when the tomcats had caught her eye.
“She’s allowed the freedom of the city in winter,” a young voice said. “The rest of the year, she’s a house cat. MacAlpin says she’s had enough kits to last her a lifetime. Her name’s Jewel, like in the stories.”
Caspar came down the ladder as nimbly as a squirrel. He was cleaner than Dunfallon had ever seen him, and he’d lost the worst of the gauntness in his cheeks.
“I like it out here,” he went on. “The beasts are good company, and Mrs. MacAlpin says Mister Mac is getting on and shouldn’t try to look after the chores all by hisself.”
Caspar’s speech had changed, acquiring a faint burr and much more careful diction. MacAlpin was nothing if not a miracle worker. But then, Mrs. Mac’s shortbread also had wondrous qualities where small boys were concerned.
“We miss you at the library,” Dunfallon said, taking a seat on a bench while the cat persisted in her efforts to investigate his greatcoat.
“I miss West Bart’s too,” Caspar replied. “Missus says we can visit on Thursday, though Mister Mac has nearly as many books as West Bart’s does. Did Miss Emmie send you?”
“Yes, in a sense.”
“That cat sure does like you.”
“And I like her. She was a friend when friends were few, and she’s apparently not forgotten her old chum.”
“Our mates matter,” Caspar said, brushing his fingers along the cat’s tail. “Mr. Dingle says that.”
Dunfallon undid the top buttons of his coat, and Jewel secreted herself next to his chest. Her proportions had changed, her purr had not.
“Mac says I’m old enough to read anything I please for myself.” Caspar took the place beside Dunfallon on the bench, scuffing his boots—new boots, from the look of them—on the dirt floor. “Mrs. Mac says reading to me helps keep her eyes sharp. They are nice people, but…”
“But you don’t trust them,” Dunfallon said. “I was about your age when I met MacAlpin. He was big, loud, and used words I’d never heard before, as if he was some kind of linguistic fencing master. I knew not if he was a demon or an angel, so I decided I would watch him closely and make up my mind when I had a better sense of his motives.”
The recollection of those early days under MacAlpin’s tutelage was both sweet and sad. Such a lonely boy, though any other child in the realm would probably have envied him.
“I should go,” Dunfallon said to nobody in particular.
“Mr. Dingle says we oughtn’t to try to solve a problem until we know all we can learn about it. Like when the bridge froze. The kittens didn’t know if the river would ice up overnight, and they didn’t know if cat snatchers lurked beneath the bridge… I woulda punched any cat snatchers where it counts, I can tell you that.”
Cat snatchers figured prominently in Dingle’s tales. Nasty, speechifying old men who stank of pipe smoke and frequently threatened to teach small kittens respect for their betters. The cat snatchers were invariably foiled, only to turn up more determined and odoriferous in the next story.
Jewel situated herself so she could peek out beneath Dunfallon’s chin.
“If you give MacAlpin a chance to earn your trust, Caspar, you will not regret it. I consider him a friend.”
Caspar glanced over at the goats, the skepticism of the ancients in his young eyes. “You ain’t just sayin’ that?”
“MacAlpin all but saved my life. He certainly saved my soul. Do you suppose wee Ralph might join you here, or Mary?”
“Mates stick together,” Caspar said. “Mr. Dingle—”
Dunfallon rose. “Mr. Dingle is not the universal authority on all questions of substance, Caspar.”
Caspar scowled. “He’s a pretty smart feller, you ask me. O’Keefe the Thief tried to recruit me and Ralphie for his gang. We said no, because O’Keefe ain’t loyal to his mates. He’s rich, he has the watchmen in his pocket, and he’s got manners, but boys go missing from his gang, and nobody will say where they went. He don’t stick with his mates.”
Dunfallon sank slowly back to the bench. “You are eight years old.”
Caspar kicked at the dirt. “I might be ten. Petty says boys from the stews come small for their age. I’m a good fighter, though.”
Dunfallon’s head was filled with a thousand tasks he ought to be seeing to, a dozen other places he could be, and yet, he could not seem to leave the stable.
“You are eight years old,” he said again, more softly.
“Mary is eight too,” Caspar replied. “O’Keefe tried to give her money, but she wasn’t having any of that. Bevins says we need to take special care to walk her home, but we was already seeing to it. We also look after Miss Armstrong. Petty and Bevins help with that.” Caspar took a particularly hard kick at the dirt. “O’Keefe has a few girls in his gang. They disappear too. I wish the cat snatchers would grab O’Keefe and toss him on a boat.”
“But you stick with your mates so you are safe from O’Keefe. What else have you learned from Mr. Dingle, Caspar? Jewel and I are curious.”
The boy prosed on, about cat snatchers and kittens, West Bart’s, and goats. Sticking with your mates, listening to your ma, washing your paws before a meal, keeping track of the streets so you didn’t get lost, and always finding the way home. He chattered as happy boys were meant to chatter, while Dunfallon, who was not a happy boy, listened.
“Would you like some shortbread?” he asked when Caspar paused between diatribes.
“Is it Mrs. Mac’s?”
“Yes. Freely given to me to ensure my continuing good behavior.” Dunfallon produced the bag and passed over a piece.
“Do all curates talk like you?”
“I thought we had established that I am not a curate.”
“So what are you?”
Dunfallon took a piece of shortbread as well. “I thought I was a duke.”
“A bleedin’ duke? Cor. No wonder you talk so toplofty. And Mr. Mac taught you how to talk, dint he? Does Miss Emmie know you’m a duke?”
“She does. So does Mr. MacAlpin. He was my tutor, long years ago.”
Caspar munched his treat. “Is it fine being Yer Grace? Miss Emmie’s brother is a lord, but she don’t care for him much.”
No, it was not fine—yet—but it could be. “A peer can be a lonely fellow,” Dunfallon said. “Everybody pretends to be your friend, and it’s hard to tell who your mates really are.”
“Do dukes allus go around with cats stuffed in their coats?”
Would this child never run out of questions? Dunfallon hoped not. “In the normal course, a cat is not part of ducal sartorial splendor, but I suspect successful authors of children’s tales are permitted the occasional feline fashion accessory.”
Lucky fellows, those authors. Jewel was a warm, rumbling weight over Dunfallon’s heart, and the shortbread was as wonderful as ever.
Though who were his mates? Did he have any mates? Who did he want for his mates? Lord Bellefonte was a good friend, but as for mates…?
The image of Emmie dozing against Dr. Johnson’s life story came to mind.
Bevins and Petty, a two-man court of inquiry.
Wee Mary, demanding her stories and deserving every one of them. Ralph, a young fellow in want of confidence who nonetheless knew who his mates were.
“I am a duke, Caspar, but I am also Christopher Dingle. I used that name to publish my book so nobody would know I’d written the stories.”
“Izzat like you have a gang name?”
“Something like it.”
“God’s bodkin, you be a duke and you be our own Mr. Dingle. You should tell Miss Emmie you wrote those stories. She’ll fall pure in love with you, and it won’t matter you’re a duke. She don’t like lords, but she’d make an exception for you.”
“Have another piece of shortbread,” Dunfallon said, shoving the whole parcel at Caspar and getting to his feet. “In fact, keep it, or share it with the goats.”
“I’m not giving Mrs. Mac’s shortbread to no goats. You still have a cat in your coat, sir.”
“Where she apparently thinks she belongs. Caspar, if you were to write a story, one worthy of Mr. Dingle and worthy of our friends at West Bart’s Lending, what adventure would you send the kittens on?”
Caspar popped another piece of shortbread into his mouth and studied the goats, who chewed their cud as if they, too, were enjoying some shortbread. The pony and Mac’s old horse peered at Caspar through the slats of their stall as if also awaiting his opinion.
“I dunno about adventures, but I like the map game,” Caspar said. “The map game can help the kittens find their way home, and you can dedicate the story to West Bart’s Lending.”
Dunfallon considered the suggestion and caught a tantalizing whiff of literary possibilities. He tousled Caspar’s hair—how often had MacAlpin tousled Lord Tertius’s hair?—and took his leave.
He was not in a hurry, for once. He had a tale to spin, and the story had to be not simply good, it had to be worthy of Dunfallon’s mates.