She left him flat. She did not even go back outside to say good-bye to his sister. He watched from her marble foyer as she climbed the stairs, most likely to go to her room.
The room where she slept.
The room that had her bed in it.
As he began to fantasize about whether or not such a room was done in lace or silk, muslin or lawn, he shook himself and went outside into the back garden. Perhaps one day, once they were married, they would come back to this house at the holidays, say, and sleep in that room. He would know then what it looked like. For now, his speculation was pointless and only served to give him pain.
He shifted in discomfort, and strode outdoors to collect his sister.
Mary Elizabeth, fully recovered from her tears over their mother, was sitting with Mrs. Angel and Mr. Pridemore, regaling the company with tales of fishing in the Highlands. As Alex towered over them, he heard Pridemore ask, “And must the line be so long, then?”
“Indeed it must,” Mary Elizabeth answered. “The trick is to make the fish at home, until the barb is sunk and you have him in your grasp.”
“Then you reel him in,” Mr. Pridemore said.
Mrs. Angel clearly could not care less about fly-fishing, but she seemed to be listening to whatever he said, simply because he said it. Margaret was not listening to the adults talk, but was running through the grass, chasing butterflies. He knew that she would have more space to do so in Richmond Park on the morrow. She seemed a sweet girl. Since she was soon to come under his protection, it seemed he had better to get to know her. Did she like to read? Was she fond of sewing, as her sister was? Was she good at math? Was she a clever girl who might one day want to go away to school? Or would she prefer a decent tutor at home?
The last question gave him pause, for they had engaged a tutor for Mary Elizabeth, and look what had become of her.
He pushed all such thoughts out of his head and raised one eyebrow at his sister. She stopped her story of fishing flies in mid-speech, and rose to her feet.
“It is time we were off,” Mary Elizabeth said. “My brother Robert is waiting dinner for us. He is a bit bored in London.”
Alex winced at that indiscretion. Their brother wasn’t bored. He simply hated the city and all the English in it. And as it turned out, there were quite a lot of English.
Mr. Pridemore stood and helped Mrs. Angel to her feet. Margaret stopped chasing butterflies in the slanting light, and they all trooped to the garden gate, where the older couple waved them off.
Alex drove the duchess’s open carriage into the busy street. He was grateful that it was the fashionable hour, and everyone who was anyone was already clogging the roadways of Hyde Park.
“You love Catherine,” Mary Elizabeth said without preamble. She did not look at him, but took in the greenery of Regent’s Park as they passed it.
“I do,” Alex answered. He was many things perhaps, but he was not a liar.
“You’d better marry her then,” his sister answered, looking at a towering elm to their left.
Alex only grunted.
* * *
He found Robbie in the music room. This time he was not playing the fife, but drumming a strange tattoo out on the top of the pianoforte. He would drum, listen to the lingering silence that followed, and then drum again. Alex stared at him for a long time, but finally interrupted him when he realized his brother was not going to stop doing whatever it was that he was doing.
“I don’t think you realize what that instrument is for.”
Robbie turned back to him, his blue eyes slowly losing their faraway look. Like the old ones, he never wrote down a note of his compositions, but he always remembered them.
“I am working on something for the gathering in August. This thing gives the closest tone to a bodhran.” He looked at his brother. “We will be home before August, won’t we?”
“Dear God in His heaven, I pray we will.”
“Prayers don’t get us far,” his brother answered. “As men, we have to do for ourselves.”
“I suppose we could hog-tie Mary Elizabeth to an unsuspecting Englishman until she agrees to marry him.”
“I wouldn’t do that to him, whoever he is. Poor bastard.”
The brothers laughed together, and Alex poured them both a finger of Islay whisky.
“So you’re going to marry her, then?” Robbie said with no segue. His brother always knew what he was going to do, even before he did.
“Aye.”
They drank their whisky in silence. Good whisky required silence to be appreciated, a truth Mary Elizabeth seemed incapable of grasping. But then, Alex did not know a woman who did.
“I’m buying a special license tomorrow,” Alex said at last. “We’ll need to have a Church of England marriage, to make it legal, but I’ll marry her in front of a true priest as soon as I get her home.”
“You’d best go to Uncle Richard,” Robbie said. “The other damned English will make you wait a month.”
They never mentioned the fact that their mother had been born an Englishwoman. She was Scottish now, by clan and kin, and by choice, but she kept up with her English relatives, including her brother, the Bishop of London.
Alex grunted in agreement, and finished his whisky. Robbie stood when he did, setting his glass down on the pianoforte he had just been drumming on.
“Does your girl know she’s to be married?” Robbie asked.
Alex smiled. “Not yet.”
“That’ll be a sight, watching you run her to ground.”
“You think I’ll have to chase her, then? How do you know she won’t come running to me?”
Robbie laughed out loud. “Because, mo bràthair, the good ones never do.”