“I brought food,” Peter said in garbled tones. “What I thought you might fancy, miss.”
“Mrs.,” Oliver corrected with a scowl.
Peter shot him a look, then made Mairead a bit of a bow. “Mrs. MacLeod-Phillips, of course.”
She bestowed one of her perfect smiles on him. “How kind of you, Peter. What sort?”
“Chocolate, chips, and those biscuits of Mrs. Gies’s that you fancied,” Peter managed, coloring furiously.
Oliver watched his handfasted wife welcome in a pair of those demons and was only slightly mollified that Derrick remained behind with him by the doorway instead of bounding into that tiny croft as if he’d actually been invited. Oliver looked at him coolly.
“You’re interrupting my honeymoon,” he said pointedly, “which, as you’ll remember, I didn’t do to yours.”
Derrick clapped him on the shoulder. “Just taking the—”
“I know what you’re taking out of me,” Oliver muttered.
Derrick smiled. “We actually came to invite you two to lunch at Patrick’s.”
“Lunch?”
“A dual clan affair that will no doubt send shockwaves through Cameron and MacLeod family tree branches back centuries. Jamie’s coming as well. Actually, he and Ian are right behind us, bearing gifts.”
Oliver looked over Derrick’s shoulder to find that was indeed the case. He made Jamie a bow, then straightened.
“My lord James,” he said politely. “Come to check on your granddaughter?”
Jamie smiled briefly. “No, Ollie lad, I’m sure she’s managing you well enough. Young Ian, lad, hand him your burden.”
“We brought you luxuries from Tavish Fergusson’s shop,” Young Ian said, holding out a bag, “but Father intimidated him right proper so you can be certain the goods are untainted.”
Oliver suspected, having gone with Robert Cameron a time or two to Tavish’s shop to keep him properly cowed, that worrying about the quality was justified. He welcomed Jamie and Ian inside Moraig’s house and sighed at the sight of his mates and his wife gathered in front of the hearth, welcoming Jamie in and making sure he was comfortably seated.
There wasn’t a thinking lad amongst that group, to be sure.
He realized with a start that he had company in the person of Jamie’s eldest son. He suspected by the look on the lad’s face that he had something to confess, but that likely came from having a few of those sorts of moments himself during his youth.
“What is it?” he murmured.
“I lost the book.”
Oliver looked at him in surprise. “What book?”
“Thebook,” Young Ian said miserably. “The Constance Buchanan book.” He paused and looked up at Oliver. “I’m approaching an age, you ken, when I might want to consort with the fairer sex.”
Oliver put his hand on the lad’s shoulder. “A very wise choice, then.”
“I didn’tmeanto lose it. I’d been keeping it in a tree.”
“Out in front here?”
Young Ian nodded.
“Very reasonable.”
Young Ian paused, then looked at him. “Should I tell my Da, do you think?”
“I imagine he already knows.”
