She pulled her needlepoint away before he sat on it. “Is there a reason behind your visit?” Her mouth went dry when she realized how impertinent her words were. She tried to make amends. “I mean, it’s lovely the two of you made the time to travel to Scotland. I was only wondering if this was a social call or did you have some business here?” She pressed her fingertips into the brocade of the settee. That hadn’t sounded much better. She wasn’t practiced at receiving callers of such superior quality. What sort of drivel was she supposed to say to them? “I meant …”
Sin laid his hand over hers and squeezed.
Summerset tossed back his dram of whisky. “No need to apologize. It is rude to just drop in on a newly-wedded couple. But it’s not as though yours was a love-match. The impertinence didn’t seem so great.”
The mantle clock ticked loudly in the silence. Sutton stopped chewing to narrow his eyes at his friend. Sin stiffened beside her.
Winnifred rolled the hem of her cuff into a tight roll.
“What?” Summerset widened his cobalt eyes innocently. “Is it impolite to state a fact?”
Winnifred squared her shoulders. She could handle Sin’s friend not liking her. And he was right about their marriage. It hadn’t been a love match. She and Sin had decided to make the best of a compromising situation, and she was fortunate to have married a man as sensible as she. “The reasons for our marriage are well-known and not something I am ashamed of. There is no reason you shouldn’t speak plainly.”
“Lovely.” Summerset bobbed his foot, the emeralds on his boot winking in the light. “Now, let us get to know your plain-spoken new wife.” He plucked a strawberry from a tray and held up to the light. “Who are your parents, dear? From where do you hail?”
He already knew the answers. Winnifred could see the knowledge in his gaze. But she wouldn’t embarrass her husband. She took a small sip of tea. “My mother passed when I was but eight years old. My father is a Mr. Hannon, a botanist. I was born and raised in Ludgate.”
“Ludgate?” Summerset bit the bottom of the berry and watched her as he chewed. “I don’t believe I’m familiar with the neighborhood.”
No, an earl wouldn’t be.
Sutton combed his fingers through his beard. “Yes, you are. That pub we like is in Ludgate. The one with the good meat pies.”
“It doesn’t matter where my wife used to live.” Sin’s voice was icy; the look he shot Summerset glacial. “It only matter where she lives now.”
“Or course.” The earl nodded to her needlepoint. “I suppose you excel at needle work and drawing, and play the pianoforte exceeding well.”
Winnifred frowned. An insult lurked within those words, but she couldn’t decipher where it lay. Was he intimating that a woman of a lower class wouldn’t be a competent practitioner of those feminine arts or mocking those endeavors as common? Unable to figure his angle, she went with honesty.
“My needlepoint is quite good, I draw very ill, and we never had a pianoforte to practice upon.” She glanced over her shoulder. “My hearing is also quite good. I believe Horatio and Banquo are asking to be let in.” She stood. “If you gentlemen will excuse me for a moment.”
They rose with her, even Summerset plopped his leg down and pushed to his feet. He obviously knew better that to engage in outright rudeness, not with Sin in the room. Although, with the way her husband clenched his hand, the earl’s covert rudeness might not go unpunished, either.
She practiced gliding from the room. Turning out of view, she slouched her shoulders and tromped down the hall.
She followed the sound of barking to a side door on the lower level. She pushed it open and stepped out to the east garden.
Deirdre held a stick above her head, both dogs jumping for it, a wide smile on her face. She chucked the stick and laughed when the dogs tripped over each other to retrieve it.
Winnifred raised a hand, shielding her eyes from the sunlight. Playing with the dogs, Deirdre seemed almost agreeable. Warm even.
Until she caught sight of Winnifred. Her smile dropped and her back stiffened. Horatio bounded back up to her, stick in his mouth, but she ignored him. “Spying now, are we? Or is there something ye needed?”
Winnifred sighed. She should hold her tongue. Deirdre was Sin’s mother, and he loved and respected her.
Banquo bounded up to her for a chest rub, and Winnifred obliged.
“I came to see what the commotion was about.” She folded her arms under her chest. “And now I’d like to discuss your animosity. I don’t need us to be friends, but I’d like for us to at least be companionable, for Sin’s sake, if not for our own comfort living together. Is there something I can do, besides change the nationality of my birth, that will aid in that endeavor?”
Deirdre mimicked her pose. “‘Aid in that endeavor’?” she repeated in perfect Queen’s English. “I know ye Sassenachs cannae help but talk doon to us Scots, but perhaps if ye tried, it might help us be companionable, as you say.”
Winnifred blinked. “Talk down to you?” She shook her head. “You’re the Dowager Marchioness of Dunkeld. You occupy one of the highest positions in the land. And you thinkIlook down onyou?”
“Don’t ye?” She took the stick Horatio dropped at her feet and threw it again. “Ye dunnae come down to the kitchens to order the day’s meals, ye dunnae help in the garden, do nothing that will get your hands dirty.”
“I thought you enjoyed your kitchen duties and your garden.” Winnifred pressed her lips together in exasperation. “I was trying to be considerate, letting you retain some of your previous tasks as marchioness. You’d earned that consideration due to your position.”
Deirdre glanced away. “My position wasnae any better than yours. Sin’s father didn’t find himself a titled man’s daughter to wed, either. He found me, I worked in my da’s dairy but Dunkeld didn’t care. He saw what he wanted and didn’t care what society would say.” She sniffed. “Like father like son. In that respect at least,” she muttered.
