Shutting the door behind her, Nurse went on her way to break her fast in the servants’ hall. Putting a finger to her lips,Juliet led the twins through the dressing room into Leith’s bedchamber, where she returned to her cocoon of bed linens beside him and patted the mattress in invitation.
Smiling and mounting the bed steps like they were playing a grand game, the twins eyed their father as if he was some sort of hibernating bear. Their glee at finding him asleep was plain, and when he rolled over at Bella’s tentative poke, his deep growl nearly sent them leaping off the bed in terrified titters.
“Wheest!” Leith sat up, grabbing Cole by the ankle and pulling him across the coverlet. “Twa faeries?”
Bella jumped into Juliet’s arms as Cole tried to escape his father’s grasp, their shrieking surely raising the servants’ brows elsewhere. But Juliet’s heart was full, her own laughter bubbling over at the morning melee.
“I’ve ne’er awakened to fairy folk.” Leith growled again, tickling Cole as Juliet kissed Bella and smoothed her petticoats.
Dressed alike, the twins were nearly indistinguishable save for the tiny freckle on Bella’s left cheek. She pressed into Juliet, smelling of herbal soap and the dried lavender sewn into her hem.
Cole’s lilting voice held a lisp. “I want my sword, Da.”
Leith stopped his tickling. “The toy sword Uncle Niall gave you?”
“Then I could fight you.”
“Where is it?”
“Nurse took it away.”
“Then ask Nurse to bring it back.”
Cole kicked at the covers. “Scairt ol’ woman.”
Bella nodded gravely. “She hid in a closet.”
“Shall we go outside this morning and give Nurse a rest?” Juliet pointed to a window where light crept past the shutters. “Look how lovely the day!”
Cole cast an adoring look Juliet’s way, finally squirming free of his father’s hold. “I want to ride Charlie!”
Bella jumped off the bed to run to the window. “I want to ride Flora!”
The twins climbed onto the large windowsill to better see outside, parting the shutters with clumsy if careful hands. Sunlight drenched them, highlighting the red glints in their hair. Again, like Leith. His mark was all over them. Surely Havilah was there too.
Turning toward her, Leith kissed Juliet’s fingers, concern in his eyes.
“You’re leaving after breakfast,” she said before he did.
“Against my will. But soon there’s Bath.”
She took a breath, hardly believing they were to have a true honeymoon. “Praise be we’re not traveling four hundred miles by coach.”
“Depending on weather, it’s considerably shorter by sea from Glasgow to Bristol, and far more comfortable.”
She looked toward the children still by the window. “I’ll miss them.” Turning back to Leith, she leaned in and kissed him. “But if you were to go without me, I’d miss you more.”
“And I you. For the first time in my life, business is my last thought.”
“All you needed to do was be here. Be near.”
She thought of all they’d done since Loveday’s wedding. Riding to the castle ruins. Roaming the gardens and what seemed like every ell of the wilderness area. Leisurely meals together. Lengthy conversations about Buchanan business and his concern over missing accounts. Reading news of the American colonies. Quiet evenings reading by the fire or playing whist.
A tumult of recent intimacies rushed in, including Leith quoting lines of poetry she loved by Mary Wortley Montagu.
Could you see my heart, how fond, how true, how free from fraudful art, the warmest glances poorly do explain the eager wish, the melting throbbing pain which through my very blood and soul I feel, which you cannot explain nor I reveal.
Their honeymoon had already blessedly begun.
