How to Train Your Highlander Read online

  The duchess’s voice warmed, and she patted the cushion beside her. “You remind me more and more of your mother by the minute. Sit down, girl, and tell your brother and your friend to join us.”

  Once Mary Elizabeth had settled close to her, she felt the tension in her body run out like water over the burn back home. The duchess smelled of lavender, as Mary Elizabeth’s own granny did, and a bit of cinnamon.

  Mary Elizabeth met Mrs. Prudence’s eyes from across the overly fancy room, and Pru managed to take a seat on the settee across from them. The ducal butler rolled the tea tray in and settled it at the duchess’s elbow. Mary watched as the duchess played mother, doling out tea and scones as if she were Christ and they all sat at the Last Supper.

  Mary Elizabeth found herself liking the old woman more and more the longer they sat with her. Perhaps it was the blue sheen of her hair, which made the faded-blonde locks look more interesting than merely gray. Perhaps it was the way the lady faced the world head-on and stared it down, as Mary herself did. That was most likely a trait that the lady had possessed long before she had married to become the most powerful duchess in the North.

  “Your mother was a bit of a scamp, as you are, miss. She was a lady of the house of Blythe, a noble family that traces its antecedents back to William the Conqueror.”

  Try as she might, Mary could not let that bit of preening pass. “Aye,” she said. “And we are kin of the Bruce on my father’s side. But go on, Your Worship.”

  The old lady did not take her to task for interrupting, but smiled at her and patted her hand. “You are a fine specimen of womanhood, young Mary Elizabeth. The House of Blythe and the scions of old Scotland have crossed well, no doubt about it. We need fresh blood in the nobility from time to time. God knows, the days of besieging a castle and carrying off the women to wed are gone.”

  “More’s the pity,” Mary Elizabeth said.

  Mrs. Prudence choked on her tea, but the duchess continued on her merry way. “Indeed. I often think that I could use a good Highlander threatening the property and carrying me away.”

  Mary blinked, and the old lady sighed.

  “But those days are behind me.”

  “They are behind us all,” Mrs. Prudence offered, by way of civilizing the conversation. Mary Elizabeth watched with faint amusement as her little governess faced down the duchess like a lioness in her den.

  “Perhaps not all of us,” the Duchess of Northumberland said, with a pointed look at Robbie, who was in that instant robbing the tea tray of its last scone and butter.

  Mary Elizabeth leaned back against her cushions and smiled as she watched a dark blush rise in Mrs. Prudence’s cheeks.

  Confident that her last sally had found its mark, the duchess turned back to Mary Elizabeth.

  “Your mother, it seems, had a taste for Highlanders. She flirted with every man who crossed her path, as any woman worth her salt did in those days, but it was your father who got her alone on a hunt. He cut her off from the rest of the party, and the two of them did not ride back to the house until well after sundown.”

  Mary Elizabeth’s ears perked up at this. The thought that her parents had ever been remotely wild made her feel less alone in the world, and made her like them more. She tried to imagine her da—her favorite fishing friend and boon companion—keeping a lady out past dark, and she simply could not get her brain to bend that far. The duchess spoke on.

  “Well, she was ruined, of course. No other man would have her, save for some nabob they pulled out of the West Indies. But your mother did not give a fig for that, nor for what anyone thought. For she did not just dally with her Highlander, but rode away with him the very next day, only to marry him in the back of beyond three days later.”

  As taken as she was with the duchess’s story, Mary Elizabeth could not let that comment pass. “Beggin’ your pardon, Your Worship, but that place at the back of beyond is my home. I won’t hear a word against it.”

  The old lady sniffed, lifting her quizzing glass to take in the contours of Mary’s face. “Outspoken, aren’t you, girl?”

  “That I am, ma’am.”

  There was a long moment that spun out between them, when Mary Elizabeth thought she saw behind the duchess’s facade to the real woman within. There was a softening behind the blue of the lady’s eyes and the trace of a smile, as if she looked on Mary Elizabeth, with her fishing, her hunting, and her knives, and liked what she saw. Mary wished to God her own mother might see her as she was and love her for it.

  She looked close at her new friend, and the dark blue of the duchess’s eyes showed a hint of her soul. It was faint and far away, like the glimmering of a candle in a shuttered room, but Mary was certain that she saw it.

  It seemed that the duchess knew she had been found out, or that her soul at least had been glimpsed from afar, for her spine straightened as if she were on horseback and her tone was acerbic when she spoke. Mary Elizabeth found that she liked her even more for that show of pride. They were more than a little alike, for all this woman’s pretensions of grandeur.

  “And you have no interest in rank, I see.”

  Mary Elizabeth did not back down. No matter how the woman beside her fought not to be known, Mary knew how lonely such a life was. Having glimpsed the real woman, she would not now pretend that she had not. If she and the old lady were to be friends—and she had just decided that they were—she could not stand on ceremony, or let the duchess continue to hide. “No, Your Worship. A man is only as good as his two hands and his brain make him.”

  There was a gleam behind the woman’s quizzing glass, a sheen that made Mary Elizabeth think of tears. “And you would say the same of a woman?”

  Mary Elizabeth did not flinch. “Yes, ma’am.”

  The duchess blinked, and the shutter came down over her soul again. But Mary Elizabeth knew it was still there. The lady had shielded her heart, but Mary Elizabeth would take care and not bruise it.

  “Well, you’ve got enough fire and vinegar in you to make two of your mother, and no mistake,” the duchess said by way of dismissal of all that had passed between them behind their chatter. “I’m glad I summoned you here. You’re just what the place needs to liven it up a bit. The country is deadly dull.”

  Mary relaxed and bantered with the lady as she knew no one else was brave or foolish enough to do. “I disagree, Your Worship. You’ve got the sea right by you, which makes for good fishing if you’ve the nerve to sail out on it.”

  “I haven’t,” the duchess said. “And neither will you. If you drown yourself off my beach, your mother will have my head on a platter.”

  Mary Elizabeth frowned but knew that she would not let such a stricture deter her. “I am disappointed, ma’am. I had hoped to go sailing.”

  “My son might take you,” the duchess said. “He’s a fair sailor, when he’ll put his books down long enough.”

  Mary Elizabeth smelled the trap then and knew better than to spring it. This lady, soul sister though she might be, had plans for Mary—plans that Mary would be quick to botch. Mary Elizabeth would marry a fat, old duke on the day Scotland and all its people fell into the sea. But she feigned ignorance, as if she were a fool.

  “Would that be your son the duke, ma’am?”

  “None other,” the old lady groused, looking peevish. “I’ve not got another one.”

  “Well,” Mary Elizabeth said, feeling that it was only sporting to let the old besom know her own position, so that there would be no question of confusion and no disappointment later, “your son has nothing to fear from me, Your Worship. He might take me for a sail and come back safe as houses.”

  The old lady looked shrewd, her eyes narrowing. “Safe, is he? And why might that be?”

  “Well, even if he kept me out until dark, he’d still be safe. For I’d never marry him, you see. I’m not the marrying kind.”

&nb
sp; The duchess stopped pretending and laid her cards on the table. Mary Elizabeth felt a surge of respect for her.

  “Your mother wants you married, girl. A duke would be just the thing.”

  Mary Elizabeth frowned like thunder. She took a breath and tried to sound civil. “My ma and I disagree on this point, Your Worship.”

  “On marrying a duke?”

  “On me marrying at all, ma’am.”

  The old lady laughed out loud at that, as if Mary Elizabeth might be brought around to her way of thinking. “Well, my son is destined to wed. No doubt he’ll be glad that there’s one girl at this house party who’s not trying to catch him.”

  Mary Elizabeth smiled at the old lady then, and knew that, just as she had not given an inch on the subject, neither had the duchess. Mary had studied enough of strategy, however, to know the value of a clean retreat. She turned her eyes to the French doors that led out into the garden.

  “Might I explore a bit, Your Worship? I’ve been trapped in a carriage for five days. I’d like to stretch my legs.”

  “By all means, dismiss the duchess before you and wander away.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Mary Elizabeth smiled, knowing the lady had to keep up the pretense of annoyance but that she understood her. It was refreshing to be understood by someone, after a lifetime of making friends with people who never gleaned a bit of her soul. Catherine loved her, and so did Mrs. Prudence, but they did not understand her, and most likely never would.

  Before she fell into a taking and began to droop about the mouth and whine, Mary Elizabeth escaped that room and all its thwarted expectations, leaving the French doors standing open behind her.

  When she stepped into the fresh, clean air of that garden, following the birdsong, she also heard the sound of the sea and went off in search of it. She had not gone far when she stumbled across an uprooted rosebush and the man who had dug it up.

  Three

  Harry had just begun to find his rhythm as he dug up the parterre rosebushes so that Simmons might plant them along the east-facing wall when he heard a thump and a curse that belonged on the docks or perhaps on one of his ships at sea.

  “Damn and blast it!” the girl said again. “Now I’ve ruined another gown, and Ma won’t give me an allowance for any more.”

  He looked up then from his work, knowing what he would find, for it seemed he knew the girl’s sultry voice already.

  His siren from the carriage an hour earlier had wandered back into his domain, and had fallen in one of the holes left by the vacated rosebushes, her pink traveling gown covered in a long streak of ochre. He sighed, the last vestige of his peace falling away like the last bit of an orange peel. He watched it go, then turned to the lady, expecting tears at the very least, followed by sniffling and the need for his filthy handkerchief.

  He wondered for one benighted moment if the girl had heard from the staff that the Recluse Duke was in the garden and, as a result, had come hunting him. His flesh began to cool, both from horror and from the sea wind touching the sweat on his shoulders. He wished for his waistcoat, which he had abandoned somewhere in the stables hours before, just as he wished for his friend Clyde to appear and occupy this woman with charm while Harry made his escape.

  Harry reminded himself that he was a gentleman and reluctantly started to help the girl out of her hole, when she straightened her skirt and leaped out of it on her own, apparently unscathed.

  “Are you the blighter who left this gaping chasm so close to the path?” she asked.

  Harry blinked and nodded. “I am.”

  She seemed to want to say more, but perhaps she was remembering that she was a lady, for she drew a breath and let it out on one long exhale. “Well,” she said. “And this is what comes of letting a stable boy get into the garden. Hand me that shovel there, and be quick about it, before your head gardener sees this mess.”

  He blinked and obeyed, and then watched as she filled the hole in the space of five minutes, layering the soil loosely so that it might breathe, then packing down the top with a flourish. She found the bag of crushed seashells bleached white sitting close by, and she covered the hole with a liberal amount of those, so that the next person who happened by might not trip as she had done.

  Until he stood by and watched a beautiful woman fill a hole in the garden, the skirt of her gown pulled tight over a delightfully rounded behind as she worked, Harry would have said that he was a civilized man. Something was clearly wrong with him, for he had not fled, nor had he offered to assist her.

  “I ought to have helped,” he said as she finished.

  She leaned on her shovel and surveyed her work with what he could only assume was pleasure. His siren tipped her head back and took in the slanting rays of the afternoon sun on her skin. The summer days were long in the North, but the sun was cool. She seemed to drink it in like mead, before she turned her smile on him.

  “And ruin a fine job?” she said. “I think not. You’re better off with the horses. Has his Royal Grace the Duke too few men to work for him, that a decent man of horses finds himself shifting among the flowers, then?”

  Harry had never heard himself referred to in such a blasé yet disrespectful manner. He felt a frisson of irritation. He thought of revealing himself to this girl then and there.

  But her curls were falling from their pins in a delightful disarray, catching the light of the sun with hints of honey brown and gold buried in them. She had the coloring his mother once had, when he was still a boy in short pants.

  He put aside all thoughts of his mother and her plans for him, as his day had as yet been a pleasant one. He did not want to think of his mother and of all he had promised her.

  Instead, he turned to the girl and offered her his arm.

  “Might I escort you back to the house?”

  “God forbid! I just escaped from there.”

  “I am told the house is very fine,” he said, feeling slightly miffed.

  She laughed at him. Her laughter was warm and sultry, as her voice was, but completely free, as if she were a courtesan who had been born into the wrong life. His siren did not seem to notice that he had not spoken again, nor did she seem to care for anything he might have said. She stopped laughing at last and handed the shovel to Simmons, who had appeared out of the bushes at the sound of her mirth.

  “I’m off to find the sea, but I thank you.” She nodded to Simmons, who bowed to her. She frowned to see him do it, a bit of darkness coming into the maple brown of her eyes. But she rallied at once, so quickly that Harry was not certain he had seen the shadow at all.

  “Try not to fall in a ditch on your way back to the stables.”

  She sauntered off then, her rounded derriere swaying. Harry stood staring after her like a fool, not even offering her a farewell. He felt the eyes of his man heavy on him, and Harry shrugged to Simmons before he took off after her.

  * * *

  She felt a bit sorry for that stable boy and wondered why on God’s good green earth he was allowed such liberty. Perhaps His High and Mighty Grace the fat duke had taken him on as a charity case when only a boy and had pledged to look after the simpleton for the rest of his life. The romantic idea pleased her, though it did not fit in with her notion of English dukes. She had never met one, but she had heard that they were as proud as princes and had little thought for those beneath them. And that they considered all the world, except perhaps the king himself, beneath them.

  Mary Elizabeth was about to dismiss all thoughts of dukes and their strange stable boys when said stable boy appeared at her elbow, following almost at her heels like a dog on a lead.

  “Would you like to see the horses?” he asked.

  It was the first thing of sense he had said since she met him, and she stopped in her tracks.

  “Why yes,” she answered. “You know where they are?�
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  He looked at her as if she was the simpleton then, and she knew she had been too condescending, which was unkind and beneath her. She followed him, walking along beside him, as he took her to a mansion about half a mile beyond the ducal gardens. The flowers bloomed right up to the mansion’s gate, so she wondered if the boy had gotten confused after all and led her to the dower house by mistake.

  But then the wind shifted, and she smelled the horses.

  “Who put the horses in a human house?” she asked. “That’s as fine a place as any in Edinburgh.”

  The two-story mansion filled three acres at least and glowed with the warm light of the sunshine on the windowpanes. Atlas did not respond to her question, other than to raise one eyebrow. He offered her his hand to help her over the cattle break and opened the half gate for her.

  “These are the richest horses I’ve ever seen,” Mary Elizabeth said, startled into bluntness by the heat of his palm. He wore no gloves, as servants never did, and she had left hers behind in the carriage. His hand was hot and dry, with calluses that had long since hardened to blend with the skin around them. She discovered in that moment that she liked a man with callused hands.

  Atlas laughed at her assessment, and she found that she liked the way his shoulders moved when he walked, when he was digging, and when he laughed. Such broad shoulders were none of her concern, of course, but for some reason, she found herself staring at them. When she wasn’t looking into the blue of his eyes.

  She had changed her mind about his eyes. They were not ice blue as they had seemed when she first met him. They were warmer than ice could ever be. They were the blue of a clear, cloudless sky after five days of rain.

  She told herself to stop being a fool. She looked away before he caught her staring like a love-addled chimp, and turned her gaze instead to the horses that lived in the mansion.