34

She instills grace in every common thing and divinity in every careless gesture.

EDMOND ROSTAND

The dining room cleared. Blythe watched as Ronan led Elodie out a side door, their intent the garden. For a moment she felt another bewildering sense of her world shifting. Elodie had been with her for so many years. Why had it never occurred to her that her lovely companion might have an opportunity to be something other than in service?

What if she became part of Clan Hume?

Orin was chattering like a magpie across from her as his brothers disappeared one by one. “I’m to have a riding lesson soon, milady. Might you go with me?”

“I should like that very much, weather permitting,” she told him a bit distractedly. “I miss my mare at Bellbroke’s stables. I used to ride her everywhere. She was quite fond of oats and orchard apples.”

“What’s her name?”

“Guinevere,” Blythe replied with a homesick pang.

Orin’s eyes widened. “The wife of King Arthur?” His gaze sought the laird, who was rounding the table. “My brother calls his stallion a like name.”

“Lancelot,” Everard said.

The coincidence made Blythe smile. “I’ve always been partial to Arthurian legend.”

“Perhaps it isn’t legend after all.” Everard accompanied her through open double doors into the next room—a large, dark-blue drawing room she’d not yet seen—then on to the smaller drawing room in a lighter shade of blue. Orin trod after them faithfully like an overgrown puppy.

“Guid day,” Everard said as he shut the double doors soundly in the lad’s smiling face. “Go join your other brothers.”

Blythe pressed a hand to her lips lest she laugh outright. “I would feel sorry for him, but he is surely used to your ill-scrappit ways.”

“Ill-scrappit, aye.” Amusement laced his brogue. “Well done, milady. You’ve not been here long but are speaking broad Scots already.”

She sat down on a settee while he took a chair across from her, the growl of thunder in the distance a dismal backdrop. The richly appointed room drew her notice, the crystal chandelier above their heads aglitter with no less than fifty beeswax tapers. She counted every one of them if only to keep her focus off of him.

Alas, tonight he was handsome. So handsome it hurt her. And freshly shaven. In exquisitely tailored garments, a snow-white stock wrapped round his sinewy neck. His gloss of hair caught back by black ribbon, tailing down his back between wide-set shoulders. He wore no wig, nor had he need of one. He rivaled the replica of Michelangelo’s statue of David in Bellbroke’s formal garden. Only he was vibrant flesh and blood, not cold, white marble.

He was reaching for something in his weskit, and the rising tick of her pulse at his nearness overwhelmed her. If the letter contained heartrending news . . . She snuck a hand into her gown’s pocket to ascertain a handkerchief was there.

“The duke’s most recent correspondence.” He handed it to her, the thin slip of paper folded and creased and obviously reread more than a few times, the black seal telling.

To her great relief, he stood and walked to a window, his back to her, a courtesy that surprised her and gave her courage as she opened the post.

I trust this finds you and all in your safekeeping well. My prayers night and day include petitions for health and happiness. I have indeed come under suspicion with the king’s men, and a warrant has been served for my arrest. Thus I am writing from various places as I elude my captors, who demand I forsake not only my Catholic faith but the Jacobite cause. If I do not, my land and title will be forfeit, and any inheritance also.

I would be errant, even foolish, if I did not broach the matter of matrimony. You well know advantageous marriages are often arranged among peers of the realm. I can think of no more desirable a match than that of my own and your distinguished house. I give you my wholehearted approval for the joining of our noble families, including all Northumbrian titles and estates therein.

Blythe swallowed, her heartbeat ratcheting harder beneath her tight stays. Nay . . . a thousand times nay! A blatant proposal of marriage. This was not what she’d expected. And now a warrant for his arrest. His continuance in hiding. Desperation driving him to rashness. Even his scrawl across the page looked hurried and forced.

She stood, dropping the letter, uncaring that it fluttered to the carpet. “So my father would further foist me upon you by forcing you to consider matrimony.”

The laird turned toward her.

“As if I had no say in the matter,” she continued, a crushing dismay weighting her. “He might have warned me of such first.”

“’Tis a letter, Lady Hedley, a proposition,” he said. “Not an order. Not law.”

“A scheme of the utmost embarrassment,” she replied, voice shaking. Tears clouded her view of him, and she blinked them back. “Lest you think I am one of those fawning, simpering females who would throw myself at your feet, I would sooner join a convent than be your countess!”

Her pointed declaration did not move him, at least not that she could see. She simply wanted to give him a way out, making room for his certain refusal of her.

He returned to his seat, his gaze holding her own. “I am not your enemy, Lady Hedley. Nor, as I’ve stated before, your gaoler. And lest you believe I have matrimonial designs, I do not.”

“But my father certainly does, and so the unsavory matter is before us.”

He took the letter from the floor and refolded it, then secured it beneath his weskit. “You would be wise to consider the matter, unpalatable as it is to you.”

Unpalatable to me? What about you?

Sinking down on the settee, she released a pent-up breath, trying to gauge how he truly felt about her becoming a Hume, which, given his stoicism, was like scaling a stone wall. Her own feelings, carefully concealed, were so at odds with her heated speech. Could he sense her attraction to him? The long looks she sent his way despite her best intentions? How her vehemence about a convent was naught but smoke?

“Consider this,” he told her as if laying out a battle plan. “You are one of the wealthiest heiresses in England if not all of Britain. You are also the last of your line. Do you seek to remain celibate and your lineage to end? Is that fair to your faither, your family legacy? Would you willingly forfeit hundreds of years of a peerage by government seizure or by casting it away of your own accord?”

She swallowed, balling her handkerchief in her fist. Looking to her lap, she allowed herself a forbidden thought. That the man across from her did not find her unworthy or unattractive—and was not enticed by her dowry.

“What do you advocate, then?” she asked, the fire slowly going out of her.

“That you weigh carefully what your faither is proposing.” His lilt deepened when he spoke with serious intent. “Do not reject it out of hand.”

Her heart squeezed hard, bringing with it an odd breathlessness.

Dare she even entertain it? She couldn’t believe he did.

“I ken the dilemma your faither faces. Is it not my own?” He raised an upturned hand. “If I believe in the divine right of kings, my allegiance is to the exiled Stuarts. They were Scotland’s monarchs before they were England’s. But in truth I have nae faith in another restoration. So do I join the doomed Jacobites and forfeit all, including my family name and the future of my brothers? Especially Orin, who has yet to grasp what sort of political upheaval he’s been born into?”

“Nay,” she said, having never heard the matter laid out so succinctly, so plainly. Orin, beloved by all, was reason enough to refrain.

He sat back, looking grieved. “I went to war and was knighted under the reign of Queen Anne. I fought with the English at Oudenarde and Malplaquet while the Stuart Pretender, as he’s called, fought for France against us. What sort of man wages war against the people he professes he wants to rule? At the same time, I want naught to do with the present Hanoverian monarch. British kings and queens come and go, and such is out of my control. My purpose is here. Wedderburn is my legacy, my future.”

A shiver ran through her. She quickly calculated all that was against him. The both of them. “And here I sit, a traitor in your midst.”

“You are your faither’s daughter, not a traitor. You’ve done nothing remotely rebellious except wear white roses on your garments.”

She looked at him, unsurprised he hadn’t missed those subtle details.

“And,” he added, an amused light in his eyes, “own a sparrow of treasonous tunes.”

Yes, but that was not all. He was treading lightly for once. Was it because he sensed she was fragile? About to shatter?

She took a breath. “Having a Papist beneath your roof is another strike against us both.”

“You needn’t answer to any for your religion but God Almighty,” he said. “Certainly not to me.”

She looked to her lap, fighting the appeal of his answer, trying to dispel this swelling yearning inside her. Nor did he allay her growing attraction with his next, low words.

“Would you allow me to call you by your given name, milady?” His query held no awkwardness. The request flowed out of him like treacle, wooing her with a few well-placed words, making mincemeat of what remained of her resistance. “At least when we are alone . . . in private?”

She nearly sighed aloud. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear he was set on wooing her.

Had he any inkling the sway he had over her harried heart?

Even so small a step as the intimacy of names worked to ensnare her further. He was not a novice with women, surely. Discerning as he was, he knew them well. Knew, too, the power of his own attraction, his personal appeal.

Already she felt the pinch that preceded brokenness. Soon he would have her whole heart in his callused hands. And he would then break it if only because she had somehow, unwittingly, fallen in love with him and he could not return her affection.

Everard all but held his breath in the sudden silence that fell between them. He looked at Blythe’s bent head, her lashes lying like pale fringe across her flushed cheekbones, her slender fingers knotting her lace handkerchief, a pearl ring on the little finger of her left hand. Gowned in blue silk in a blue room, she seemed to belong to it.

He lingered longest on her upswept hair. How would it be tumbled down around her shoulders? He felt an almost irresistible urge to remove her lace cap.

“You would call me Blythe.” She looked up at him in that poised way she had, though he sensed she was ruffled beneath the surface. “And I would call you Everard?”

He nodded, moved by something he couldn’t name. Her fragility, mayhap. The utter grace of her every move was as if he were watching a minuet, a dance. She had a wistful cast to her delicate features that was not only beguiling, it was . . . haunting.

“I should like that, Everard,” she said softly.

“Blythe is a singular name.” In a land of Janets and Agneses and Marys, it was as unique as the lass who bore it.

“’Tis a river in Northumberland,” she told him, slowly unfisting her handkerchief and smoothing it out across her lap. “In Old English it means gentle, pleasant.”

“The name suits you,” he said, holding her green gaze. “At least in this instance.”

She nodded, pensive. “’Twill be good to have a friend in this house besides Orin.”