AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He shook his head.
She sighed, considering her options. She returned to her room, took a heavy shawl from her chair and went to place it around Jamie’s little shoulders.
‘There is a nice fire in my parlour and I was about to send for some chocolate. If you wish to join me, you may.’
She returned to her room and pulled at the bell cord and waited.
‘There’s a bundle at yer doorstep, Mrs Langdale,’ Beth announced when she entered, her mouth prim.
‘I know, Beth. Could I bother you for two cups of chocolate and perhaps some biscuits?’
Beth nodded and smiled.
* * *
She was still smiling when she returned with a laden tray.
‘Still there, the bundle. Stubborn like his father. Here you are, Mrs Langdale. Mayhap this will do the trick.’
Five long minutes later the door to the parlour opened, paused and opened further. A very stubborn boy.
He did not speak as he joined her at the table, or as he took his cup and drank with all the enthusiasm of a man contemplating entry to debtors’ prison, but the chocolate went down, as did the biscuits.
‘I should return to the nursery now.’
‘That is probably best.’
‘I only wanted to see if the log was there.’
‘I know. Perhaps your father was worried, especially after my foolishness in falling in the water the other day.’
He finally looked at her.
‘That was foolish. I would not go there when the tide is rising. It wasn’t rising then.’
‘Well, fathers sometimes worry more than they need. It is hard to know just how much worry is right.’
‘He was angry, not worried.’
‘It looks the same from the outside, Jamie. He was very angry at me when I worried him.’
He shrugged, his little shoulders barely shifting her shawl, and she was not certain she had quite made her point, but it would have to do.
‘Come, I will see you to the nursery.’
At the nursery doorway she stopped and smiled.
‘Your father did tell me not to go in.’
Jamie’s mouth relaxed, hovering on the edge of a smile as he slipped inside, closing the door. Beth was waiting in her room, a peculiar expression on her face. Jo wondered if perhaps Beth, too, felt she was overstepping her boundaries with Jamie. But then the maid smiled and the thought fled.
‘Malcolm McCrieff and his wife are below, Mrs Langdale. Stopped by on their way to Kilmarchie. Feeling at home already, the McCrieffs,’ Beth said, her voice a little acid. ‘His Grace requests you join him.’
There were limits. Sitting tamely in the drawing room after Benneit’s tantrum while he entertained his future brother-in-law was the definition of several steps beyond her personal limit.
‘I have the headache, Beth,’ she said with dignity.
‘I’ll tell Angus. His Grace won’t be happy, though. He’s in a mood and it will be a wonder if he doesn’t bite someone’s head off before a new day rises.’ Beth’s sigh robbed her words of their disrespect.
Jo waited for the door to close and wondered if that would be the end of it or whether Benneit would storm up there with demands as he had at the ball. In his present state of mind he appeared capable even of that. And if he came to her room she might burst into tears.
She stood. She would not sit there waiting for the axe to fall. If he could not find her, he could not make demands and she could not make an utter fool of herself. There was one place she was quite certain no one would look for her. Just for an hour or so she could be assured of being left utterly alone.
She lit a candlestick and left her room.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Finally. He thought they would never leave. Malcolm McCrieff would be just like his father one day—when he sank his teeth into a topic it was like sitting through the speeches of three of the most tedious orators at the House of Lords. How the McCrieff women sat so placidly while they droned on... It would drive him mad. Tessa McCrieff might be lovely, sweet and the perfect wife for the Duke of Lochmore, but each step closer to his fate rang with a visceral resistance to it.
He couldn’t do it.
He was glad Jo had not joined them in the end. It had been pure bloody-mindedness on his part to even send for her after his outburst which had capped the most hellish week of his existence. He had merely...
