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Her eyes flew up and he felt his cheeks warm in embarrassment. Had he really asked that aloud?
‘I mean, if you are to spend time out of doors often with Jamie... Perhaps Mrs Merry might procure you some...cream. Bella was always in a fright about freckles.’
She touched her cheek with a look of bemusement, as if the freckles were already spreading like the measles.
‘I don’t... Well, I do freckle a little, but I don’t use creams. I never have. It does not bother me.’
‘Never mind then. Disregard it. Do the numbers make any sense to you? Do you think you can review the tallies?’
‘Certainly. Your steward’s hand is very neat. Yours is quite legible, too, Your Grace,’ she added and he smiled.
‘You needn’t spare my blushes, Mrs Langdale. I don’t aspire to Mr McCreary’s calligraphic heights. I reserve my patience for other endeavours.’
She leaned back, looking up at him with curiosity and again he felt the strange dislocation. She looked too comfortable in his chair, despite being half-lost in its size.
He stepped back.
‘May I leave you with the ledgers, then? I have some business to see to in the village.’
‘Of course, Your Grace.’
‘Good. Thank you. Don’t overtax yourself.’
Her mouth curved, slowly. She could not possibly be aware of his discomfort but he felt peculiarly defenceless, like a child before a headmistress.
‘Goodbye, then,’ he repeated and retreated before his mouth, mind, or body committed any additional gaffes.
Outside in the forecourt as he swung on to Lochlear’s back he glanced up at the window of the estate room. He must truly be unhinged to allow a little grey-eyed pixie to unsettle him like that.
Chapter Fourteen
‘’Ou forgot to thow me Fou-ah.’
‘And you forgot to swallow before you spoke, Jamie,’ Jo replied, not looking up from her book. Jamie responded with a snorted giggle and an audible swallow.
‘You can’t scold if your eyes are laughing, Jo.’
It was such an adult, perceptive thing for a boy of four to say she could not help laughing.
‘Quite right. It was Foula, yes?’
‘Yes. Let’s go to the Map Room.’
She enjoyed the Map Room almost as much as Jamie. The map of the known world painted on one wall between stacks of bookshelves was even more elaborate than the one in London. It was surrounded by depictions of beasts, both real and mystical and not very accurate, as there appeared to be monkeys off the coast of Wales and what looked like an elephant poking its trunk in the direction of France, while a bear was lying on its back, its paws balancing or scratching at Ireland. She particularly liked the dragon off Zanzibar that Jamie had mentioned in Glasgow, a great scaly monstrosity with eyes like owls glaring back at them. Benneit’s mother had clearly been talented.
Jamie rushed forward, pointing to a blue and brown blob along the western shore.
‘I made this. Can you guess what it is?’
‘Is it a ship?’
Jamie crowed with pleasure.
‘You guessed! I will be captain and will sail all the way here...’ His finger traced a line across the wall and ended near a triangular shape on the continent of Africa. ‘This is a pyramid.’
‘Just like in Desert Boy,’ she approved.
‘I never should have bought that book at Hatchard’s,’ the Duke said behind them.
This time she was not surprised by his sudden arrival. Perhaps his scent reached her before she even realised it—the hint of wind and rainy glens and warm musk.
They might be living in a castle, but in every other respect she imagined Lady Theale and the Uxmores would disapprove of this very informal approach to rearing the next Duke of Lochmore. The Uxmores always insisted on unstinting formality and even at Langdale they dined in state every day. At Lochmore they most often dined in the nursery at a plain wooden table with an unshod four-year-old boy, a dog that looked like the canine version of the long-haired Highland cows that filled the fields, and increasingly often, with the Duke who often arrived wet and windblown, alternately dressed in his riding clothes or his shirtsleeves. Once he even came dressed in a traditional kilt after a village meeting. He had apologised for his dress, but she had secretly thought he looked magnificent with the orange and blue plaid fabric about his waist and slung over his shoulder.
