Grace Burrowes - Once Upon a Tartan

He glanced up to see his father looking thunderous a few yards off, and felt something shift in his chest. The way became clear between one heartbeat and the next, regardless of the consequences to him or to whatever plans the marquess was hatching.

“I don’t want you to feel that way anymore, Fee. If I promise to take Frederick out to the covert near the millpond, will you find your aunt Hester and ask her to help you pack?”

“You mean I can go home? I can really go home?”

“It might take us a day or two to make the arrangements, and Albert probably would not enjoy the journey, but yes, you can go home.”

Tye looked over Fiona’s head to catch his father’s eye. The marquess was standing very still, for once silent and not arguing.

“Fee.” Hester spoke softly from behind the marquess. “I’d like nothing better in the world than to help you pack. Let your uncle Tye take the fox back to his family, and you come with me.”

Fiona cast a last look at the beast lying passively in Tye’s grasp. “You promise?”

She was asking if he’d keep his word about the fox, not about her journey home.

“I have given my word, Fiona. I would not break it.”

She got up. “Good-bye, Frederick. Someday I’ll see you again, like Androcles.”

“Fee.” Hester held out her hand, barely suppressed fear in her voice. And the fear was justified. Every adult watching this tableau knew that one bite, one scratch, and the girl might have been consigned to a miserable death.

Tye stroked a hand over the fox’s matted pelt. “I do wonder how you’ll transport that rabbit clear back to Aberdeenshire.”

“I can take Harold?”

Now Tye rose with the fox in his arms. “You can if you can figure out a way to safely transport him. I’m sure your aunts will help you think of something.”

When Hester and Joan had led Fiona safely toward the house, Quinworth holstered his gun. “For God’s sake, some one of you lot get Spathfoy a pair of stout sacks.” He stomped off, leaving Tye to keep his promise to Fiona.

The fox had the grace to expire at the moment Tye laid him among the weeds, thus allowing the stable boys to properly dispose of the remains. After muttering a self conscious prayer for the departed—Fiona might ask, after all—Tye then went to his rooms and scrubbed himself from head to foot with lye soap. Only when he’d changed and ordered his coat, shirt, and gloves to be burned, did he head down to the library in search of another beast who was ill, in pain, and creating havoc for all around him—while he very likely missed his family.

The marquess was sitting at the estate desk when Tye found him, staring at pile of folded letters and looking for the first time in Tye’s experience like an old man. That was a pity and a shame, and it made not one goddamned, bloody, perishing bit of difference.

“Fiona is going home.”

The marquess’s chin came up, reminding Tye of… Fiona. “Says who?”

“I do. She’s not safe here. That damned animal could have ended her days with a single bite, and as it is, Hester is likely still scrubbing the girl from head to toe with strong soap. Even the saliva of an animal that sick can cause death. What in the hell were you thinking?”

“What was I thinking!” Quinworth roared at his son and came around the desk. “What was I thinking? You are my son and heir, and you took that reeking, vile creature into your grasp without a thought for what it would do to your mother and sisters to watch you fall prey to madness and misery! I cannot be held accountable for the child’s queer starts and obstinate demeanor. You could have been killed, Spathfoy, the title sent into escheat, and God knows how this family would have survived.”

The marquess dropped his voice. “The girl stays, Spathfoy. I am Quinworth, the head of her family, and I say she stays.”

Tye felt a calm descend on him, not a forced, artificial steeling of nerves necessary to weather a crisis, but a bone-deep sense of unshakable purpose. “You did not, or perhaps could not , act in a manner consistent with her safety. Your bellowing and obstreperousness were the opposite of what the situation called for. The girl goes home, my lord, or I will renounce your title at the first opportunity.”

“Renounce—!”

“I will renounce the Quinworth title, I will provide a home for my mother and sisters, and I will dower my sisters handsomely, unless Fiona goes home to the Highlands tomorrow, there to dwell unmolested and undisturbed by you and your damnable machinations.”

“You would turn your back on a title more than three hundred years old? You’d have nothing but that paltry Scottish earldom from your mother’s people, and you’d content yourself with that?”

“The girl goes home, my lord. I want your word on it.”

Quinworth gave him a curious, who-the-hell-are-you glance, and Tye’s calm became almost happy. Sending Fiona home was the right thing to do; he only wished he’d thought of a way to do it sooner. “Fiona is not safe in your care, Quinworth. If you can’t understand a child well enough to keep her safe, then she’s better off elsewhere.”

“The beast was rabid, Spathfoy… I was not expecting my granddaughter to march up to the stables cradling a rabid fox in her arms. I’ve known her only a few days… I say she stays, and I am Quinworth.”

His lordship sat heavily on the desk, but Tye was having none of these maunderings. The relevant truth popped into his head all of a piece.

“What you are, sir, is mean , and we none of us have to do what you say. Fiona goes home, tomorrow if I can arrange it. You can dower her or you can establish a trust for her. If Balfour allows it, you can visit her. I do not fault you for not knowing her, Quinworth, but you do not love her, and that is why she must be returned to her family by those of us who do love her.”

Tye waited for a response, but his lordship’s expression had become as blank as the fox’s. When Tye left the library, Quinworth was still sitting on the desk, his backside half-covering some official-looking document.

Hester had made Fiona take two baths and scrubbed the girl thoroughly each time. She’d washed Fiona’s hands with whisky; she’d ordered the child’s clothes burned and the ashes buried deep. Over and over throughout the day, she’d examined Fiona for any broken skin, even something as trivial as a hangnail, and when Fiona had finally fallen into a peaceful sleep, Hester had sat watching the girl breathe.

There was no worse death than rabies. Every child was raised with some ghoulish tale of a person who’d suffered that fate. Grown men had been known to take their own lives after being mauled by a mad dog rather than brave a death from rabies.

And Tiberius Flynn had—

Hester cut the thought off. She’d start to cry again if she went down that road. Cry and lose her dinner and tear her hair.

The creature staring back at Hester from the vanity mirror was pale, haunted, and miserable. She was a woman who did not deserve a lifetime as Spathfoy’s wife, a woman who’d leapt to conclusions and judgments—wrong conclusions and bad judgments, yet again.

Tiberius Flynn was not coldhearted, ruthless, and self-absorbed. He had faults, but his worst fault was that he loved too well . His filial devotion was unswerving, his fraternal concern unrelenting, and his avuncular notions of duty and honor had very nearly earned him a lingering, terrible death.

Hester told herself she was crossing the hallway to apologize to him, to beg his understanding, and to make a final peace with him. This was not entirely a falsehood, but when Spathfoy looked up from his escritoire to regard her, she knew it was not the full truth either.