Perhaps not all her lessons in manners and deportment had yet taken effect, he thought wryly. But her enthusiasm proved rather infectious, all the same.
“Fishing,” he told her.
One of the females before him wore an expression of instant joy. The other, one of distinct suspicion. At least he was certain to win one of them over.
“Come along,” he told them. “I have everything prepared.”
*
Fishing was agentleman’s sport.
But Catriona had not bothered to douse her husband’s enthusiasm with her disapproval. She had been keeping him at a distance enough ever since their row days before. And so, she found herself being charmed by him all over again—albeit vicariously—as she stood on the sun-stained banks of the river cutting through Marchmont in a peaceful bend just before the dams, watching him teach Olivia how to manage her fishing tackle.
“This is a rod fashioned of bamboo,” he was telling the girl, “held together with screws of brass. It is a beautiful contraption, really.”
“I’ve fished in my day, but we never had nothing so fine as this,” Olivia confessed, wonderment in her voice.
“We never had anything as fine,” she and Alessandro corrected in unison.
Their gazes met and held for a beat, and she could almost imagine, gathered as they were, the blissful sunshine of late summer upon them, the peacefully flowing river before them, that they were parents teaching their child.
Together.
But that was just a fantasy. A fiction her heart longed to believe.
For in truth, Olivia was not their daughter, and the Earl of Rayne had no intention of lingering after he had planted his seed in her womb. Her jaw clenched at the thought.
He inclined his head toward her, seemingly in deference, before returning his attention to Olivia. “This is a fly I made when I was a lad, Olivia.”
“It must be dreadfully old,” remarked the incorrigible child.
To her amazement, her husband laughed. How rare and precious a gift it was, that sound. It rang, clear and deep and beautiful, touching all the parts of her heart she was do desperately determined to keep from him.
“It is almost an antiquity,picaro,” he told Olivia. “But I promise you my flies can catch fish, and as we are about to engage in a tournament, you will be grateful indeed I have lent them to you. Lady Rayne is not so fortunate.”
“A tournament?” Olivia asked.
“Indeed,” Catriona added, her eyes narrowed. “What manner of tournament have you in mind, Rayne? I have no wish to fish, you realize.”
“No wish to fish, why, Lady Rayne, you are a poetess,” he teased.
She frowned at him. Her husband was a breathtaking, beautiful man. But when he smiled and teased her, her every defense against him dissipated, and he was even more impossible to resist.
“What lure are you providing me that is so inferior to Olivia’s?” she asked, forcing herself to be concerned with more important matters than admiring her husband’s looks. She did that readily enough every time she was in his presence.
Even when she was angry with him.
And yes, even when she was doing her best to keep him at a distance.
“Not inferior. Merely different. For you, I have a lob worm,” he told her.
The wordwormmade her wrinkle her nose in distaste. “Is it alive?”
“Of course.” He grinned. “Until I hook it.”
Her heart did strange things inside her chest. All the stranger for the subject matter. “No thank you,” she told him. “I shall watch you and Olivia have your tournament. That shall do quite nicely.”
“No indeed,” he denied, shaking his head. “I am afraid that will not do, will it, Miss Olivia?”
