But . . . even a wee bit of Fox Carnegie struck her as better than nothing. After all, up until fifteen minutes ago, she had been thinking she would spend the rest of her life alone. Certainly, if possible, she would wish to eat the whole clootie dumpling, but why deny herself even a slice of it out of girlish longing?
Captain Carnegie took a few steps, leaning on his walking stick, a limp more pronounced as he moved. Easing himself again into the chair opposite her, he stretched out his right leg, lips tightening in a grimace.
Tired. He looked so tired.
His weariness pulled on her heartstrings, unraveling them.
“I know the manner of my proposal is abrupt.” He shifted, attempting to make his leg comfortable. “But I have given the matter much thought, and I do not ask you lightly. I understand some of your situation from the little Lord Hadley has told me.”
Lord Hadley? Gracious, Captain Carnegie had said that the earl was involved with this. She knew and admired his lordship, but they were hardly more than speaking acquaintances. What had Lord Hadley said?
“I know you will always be welcome here at Thistle Muir,” Captain Carnegie continued, “but you likely wish to manage your own home, to have a future independent of your brother. Moreover, you and I may not have children of our own, but . . .” He hesitated before continuing. “I have a ward . . . a young ward at Laverloch who requires a mother figure—”
“A ward?” Leah could hear the shock in her own voice. “I hadnae heard tell of a child.”
All these revelations positively winded her. How had Mrs. Buchan and Mrs. Clark missed this vital piece of information?
But the captain’s staff came from Aberdeen and did not mingle with the locals, so no one had caught a whiff of a child being housed at Laverloch.
“I preferherpresence to not be widely advertised,” Captain Carnegie replied.
Oh. So that perhaps explained the silence.
And . . .her?
“A young girl, then?” Leah asked.
“Yes. Five years of age.”
“Captain Carnegie—”
“Fox, if you please. If we are to contemplate marriage, perhaps we should move to using our given names.”
Fox.
Mrs. Fox Carnegie.
Leah closed her eyes, taking a steadying breath.
“Then, please, call me Leah.” Opening her eyes, she smiled at him. “May I ask how your ward . . .”
“Madeline,” he said her first name and nothing more. No surname. Just . . . Madeline.
“Madeline,” Leah repeated, slowly. “May . . . may I ask how she came into your care?”
Fox’s face instantly shuttered, dark curtains falling over his visage. “I do not discuss Madeline’s past. Suffice it to say, she is motherless and under my protection.”
His tone was razor-sharp, a line of questioning Leah was not to cross.
Ah.
So, Leah was not to know the history of the girl she would be raising if she accepted his offer of a practical marriage. Were the details of the girl’s parentage too salacious to repeat? Or did Madeline’s past cause Fox pain somehow?
“I see,” Leah said, though she was sure her tone implied otherwise.
She reached for the teapot, using the ritual of tea-pouring to calm the rioting chaos within her.
To his credit, Fox did not misunderstand or even ignore the shift in her manner.
