The Laird Takes a Bride(52)

“Thank you.” He added, still impulsively, “May I ask you something? It’s something I’ve been curious about.”

He saw her quickly turn to him, as if alarmed. As if there was something she didn’t want him to know. “Curious about what?” she asked.

“About how you learned to speak French so well.”

“Ah.” She sounded rather thankful. “There was a French family who came to Wick Bay, very poor and in distress. I spent a lot of time with them, and eventually I picked up their language. And what about you? You understood me at that dinner with Wynda? Avez-vous un tuteur, ou vous avez été envoyé loin à l’école?”

“The tutors came later. School came first, when my brother and I were sent to one in Glasgow, where after six years there they finally kicked us both out.”

“Kicked you out? Why?”

“Well, we didn’t ride horses through the buildings, but we did accept other dares.” He laughed. “We were, in fact, the terrors of the school.”

“What did you do?”

“What didn’t we do. The pranks, the fights, the defiance. We did manage to sneak some learning in, but we hated it there. We just wanted to be home.”

“Were your parents angry?”

“Our father didn’t care, but our mother—my God, she was furious. She wanted to send us to Eton, but Gavin and I vowed we’d run away on a pirate ship before we’d ever set one toe in England. She knew us well enough to believe we really would do it, so we stayed home, evaded the poor tutors she brought in, and more or less ran wild after that. She gave up on us, as long as we didn’t interfere with her endless renovations.”

Fiona was quiet, as if absorbing this, and Alasdair was already sorry he’d said so much. He hated looking backward, hated thinking about the time before—

She said, very quietly, “I hope you don’t think I was listening to gossip, but Dame Margery did tell me about . . . what happened on the loch . . .”

With an effort he made his voice light. “Don’t worry about it. What about you? Did you and your sisters ever go to school?”

Again, a silence, as if she were registering his rebuff, and deciding how she wanted to react.

Then:

“No, we didn’t. We had a governess for a few years, a very earnest and capable lady, but eventually Father’s ambivalence about the value of female education overcame him, and he let Miss Dwight go. She found a more congenial situation in Dumfries, and Father let me buy as many books as I wanted, so it all worked out fairly well, especially since my mother was so intimidated by Miss Dwight that she completely went out of her way to avoid her.” Suddenly Fiona laughed, with what sounded like genuine amusement. “Once I found her underneath the stairs. Just sitting there. Poor Mother!”

Alasdair smiled. And he said, still in that interested, impulsive spirit: “May I ask another question?”

With laughter still in her voice, she said, “Yes.”

“What’s your favorite dish?”

“Cook’s boeuf à la Bourguignonne.”

“Favorite color?”

“Periwinkle.”

“Writer you most admire?”

“Shakespeare.”

“Season?”

“Spring.”

“Dogs or cats?”

“Dogs. Of course.”

“Can you swim?”

“Yes. But don’t tell anyone.”

He laughed. “Why not?”

“Why not?” she repeated. “That’s a good question. I suppose it’s felt like a secret for all these years. Back home I used to swim sometimes in the bay, when no one was around. Even though Father told us not to.”

“A renegade! Weren’t you cold?”

“I almost froze to death. But it was worth it.”

He very nearly said, Gavin and I used to swim in the loch, but caught himself just in time. And his brain, very agile and quick, served up something else he had wondered about, thanks to her mention of the bay, and home. Was there, back there, a swain who had lost her to her precipitous marriage?

So he instead said:

“Why were you still unmarried at twenty-seven?”

“Still harping on that, laird?” In an instant the mirth was gone. “Worried that there’s something wrong with me? Some defect I ought to have disclosed? After all, you’ve never seen the upper part of my body, have you? I could have three breasts, or bloody sores there, or worse. I suppose you can’t bear to look—”

“Fiona, I only—”

“Or perhaps I am—as you so discreetly hinted that evening in the Great Drawing-room—past my best childbearing years. Maybe it’s hopeless, and all these delightful romps together have been a waste of time.”