“Are you missing Scotland, Mr. Buchanan?” Loveday was looking at him again as if still forming an impression. She had an engaging manner just shy of coy. “Or are our colonial diversions sufficient for the time being?”
He paused. He hardly missed Ardraigh Hall as he was seldom there. His heirs sprang to mind with the usual nick of guilt. Missing someone or something meant some sort of established bond, of which they had none other than that he’d sired them. Young as they were, Bella and Cole weren’t giving him a single thought. Yet that odd longing he’d experienced since their birth washed through him again. To be a father. To have the tender tie he’d not had with his own father. And then, quick as it came, the desire vanished.
“Missing Scotland, nae, especially not on a blithe November day,” he finally replied. “You colonials are sufficiently diverting, aye.”
She flashed that easy smile of hers again, making him wonder if Juliet was dimpled and he’d overlooked it. “I’venever been to your storied country, though my sister and I were schooled in England and learned your history there.”
“You have nae trouble understanding my broad Scots?” he said, his Glaswegian dialect deepening with its rollingr’s and odd lilts. Americans sounded a bit flat in comparison, though colonial accents varied.
“I’m too used to Scotsmen here, particularly in your James River stores.”
Was she hazarding a dig at the oft contentious relations between planters and the firm? His suspicions arose, though she showed no such guile. “The Catesbys are always welcome in Glasgow.”
Her pleasantness turned probing but was nonetheless charming. “You have a great many business interests in the city, I understand.”
“In the city and outside of it.”
“Father mentioned a townhouse and a country house.”
He gave a curt nod, looking toward the lawn. Another game of ninepins was beginning, but for now, he was content to talk. “Ardraigh Hall is a few miles southeast of Glasgow, but my townhouse is on Virginia Street.”
Her brows arched. “You jest!”
“It seems fitting. This colony forms the foundation of the Buchanan firm. What about your own family history here? Virginia is not auld, so it should be brief.”
She smiled and took a sip of syllabub, her gaze on her father as he took a turn at the game. “Best ask my sister that. She has a passion for the past and our humble Jamestown beginnings. Perhaps she’ll even show you a portrait or two. They’re nothing like your British long galleries, but we do try to honor those Catesbys who came before.”
“Mayhap I should have done the same before leaving Scotland, though I find it as hard to sit still as my children.”
“Children?” She looked shocked.
“Twins.” He enjoyed righting her obvious misperceptions. “Bonny bairns, so tapsalteerie they’re kept in the country.”
“Does this mean there’s a Mrs. Buchanan?”
So, she had a wee bit of her sister’s forthrightness. Somehow it blunted the burn of his predicament. “There was once.”
“My sincerest sympathies, sir.” She turned mournful, only brightening when Widow Payne came toward them.
“I don’t mean to interrupt,” the middle-aged matron said with a smile. “But Mrs. Ravenal wishes to show Loveday and I her late-blooming roses.”
Leith returned to the game, his thoughts anchored to the ailing Juliet.
16
What you seem to be, be really.
Benjamin Franklin
“He is not what he seems!”
Loveday burst into Juliet’s bedchamber, bergère hat in hand, ribbons trailing on the pine floor. Seated at her escritoire, Juliet looked up from the letter she was writing Aunt Damarus.
She set her quill aside. “Whoever do you mean?”
“Mr. Buchanan.” Loveday sank down upon an upholstered ottoman, out of breath and clearly aflutter. “He told me all manner of things about himself, but it was what he didn’t say that has me most intrigued.”
“Such as?”
