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Tessa was breathing heavily.
‘I will speak with His Grace, Mother. Alone!’
‘You will do no such thing! Aberwyld!’ Lady Aberwyld gave a savage tug on the bell cord. ‘Lochmore, you will not listen to this foolish child. These are mere nerves.’
Benneit had hardly dared breathe throughout the scene, but now he turned to meet Tessa’s stormy gaze.
‘Are they, Lady Tessa?’ he asked calmly, holding up a hand as Lady Aberwyld began answering in her daughter’s stead.
Tessa raised her chin.
‘No. I told Father and Mother the night you left that I will not marry you. I shall not change my mind. We women have few enough prerogatives, but I believe we still possess this one.’
‘You do,’ he replied as calmly as his thudding heart allowed. ‘It was always your right. I would never wish for a bride that did not come willingly. And you deserve to want that of your bridegroom as well.’
A sudden, surprising smile cleaved through her tension.
‘Precisely, Your Grace. I might have been willing to live in the shadow of the ghost of a beautiful countess, but not in the shadow of the live ghost of a woman I admire. I want more in life.’
‘You little fool,’ Lady Aberwyld wailed. ‘He might love her, but he will marry you. That is all that matters.’
‘No, it isn’t.’ Benneit and Tessa spoke the words in unison and suddenly the tension in them both broke like an ice floe setting loose on the loch.
‘Why did you come today, Benneit?’ Tessa asked, ignoring her mother. ‘To offer for me?’
He shook his head.
‘To speak with you. To explain. To beg if need be. But to marry you if that was what you wanted and try to do my best by you. Jamie matters more than I do.’
Her mouth wavered.
‘But that is why I cannot do it. I want someone to do that for me. To want me up to the edge of their honour.’
The door opened and McCrieff strode in, his brow lowering ominously at the sight of his daughter and Benneit, his eyes wary as he absorbed Lady Aberwyld weeping into her handkerchief. But he visibly dragged a smile on to his ruddy face.
‘Lochmore!’
Tessa stepped forward.
‘I told him I shan’t marry him, Father.’
McCrieff gave the roar of a wounded bull and Benneit stepped between him and Tessa, but McCrieff merely raised his hands and grabbed his hair as if trying to pull it out by the roots.
‘Ignore her, Lochmore, these are naught by maidenly fears.’
‘I shan’t marry him.’ Tessa’s voice was calm and final and for a moment she looked incredibly like her father—obdurate and solid. ‘I shall not yield.’
‘’Tis your fault! You spoilt her, Aberwyld!’ Lady Aberwyld moaned.
‘I spoilt her? I? You were the one set on sending her to Glasgow! The girl needs town polish, you said! Well, this is what you get!’
Benneit and Tessa stood silent as battle waged between husband and wife. It raged for full five minutes before Lady Aberwyld withdrew, weeping into her handkerchief, her tambour frame bouncing to the floor.
McCrieff rounded again on his daughter, but in a moment the fury deserted him.
‘Ah, child. Child... You’re a fool. You would be Duchess of Lochmore! My life’s dream.’
‘Yours, sir. Not mine,’ she answered simply.
‘I’ll send you away.’
‘I know that. I hope somewhere not too wild. Seeing that I am already such a heathen.’
His shoulders fell.
‘Will you not reason with her, Lochmore? This is your fault, you know. She thinks you are in love with that little Englishwoman. I told her it is different for men. Why, you could even bid your widow stay and we’d not say a word.’
‘Father!’
‘No, I couldn’t, McCrieff. Neither Mrs Langdale nor your brave daughter deserve such disrespect. I would not dishonour your family or a woman I care for in such a manner.’
McCrieff sank into the chair vacated by his wife.
‘You young people with this nonsense of love. The world has become a foolish, self-indulgent place. Your father and I ought to have known better, too. Foolishness is clearly heritable.’
‘My father loved my mother very much,’ Benneit said with certainty, surprising himself.
